According to a broker, homeowners who need to renew their mortgage have just 20 minutes to make a decision or risk losing business.
Many lenders pulled deals from the market this week ahead of an expected rate hike.
Mike Powell, who runs a brokerage firm in Caldicot, Monmouthshire, said he had to tell the same client three times that the agreed deal no longer existed.
The Bank of England publishes its latest interest rates later.
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- Rate hike expected after inflation shock
- Why is the Bank of England changing interest rates?
It is expected to rise to 4.75% from 4.5%, although some have suggested it could reach as high as 5%.
This could mean homeowners have to pay hundreds of pounds a month more on their next contract.
Mr Powell said: “You would spend more time picking a holiday than figuring out if that mortgage deal was best for you.”
“They ask customers to make important decisions. Maybe your husband or wife has a job and you want to talk about it. By the time they come back to us, the mortgage contract could be over already.”
He said last week had been the toughest since he started the job 14 years ago and lenders were partly to blame.
He said lenders have historically given two or three days’ notice before closing a deal, but recently many loans have been removed within hours.
“I think lenders could do better. As brokers we are now trying to start a petition to say we need at least 48 hours lead time.” [before deals are pulled].”
Almost a quarter of fixed term mortgages in Wales are expected to expire this year, according to data shared with Wales Live.
About 36,000 of these – 12% of all 291,000 term mortgages in Wales – will expire in the second half of this year.
One of them is Nicholai Rider, 45, from Denbigh, who said if interest rates continued to rise, his family would face selling their home or taking on debt to make ends meet.
He and his wife bought their three-bedroom home in 2021 after finding out they were expecting a second child.
In order to find a home within their budget, they decided to purchase a property that required extensive renovations, but the rising cost of living meant that the heating had to remain off for most of the winter.
Your current fixed-rate mortgage contract runs until December.
Mr Rider said he expected their mortgage repayments to rise between £300 and £500 a month depending on whether they now set an interest rate by paying a penalty fee.
“It feels like gambling. It’s really like that. It’s one of those things where nobody can give you an answer because nobody knows. It’s a constant worry,” he said.
Principality, the largest building society in Wales, said about 26,800 of its fixed-rate mortgage contracts in Wales would expire this year – about a third of the roughly 75,000 fixed-rate mortgages on its books in the country.
Niall Jones, 28, decided to get a new mortgage deal this week.
Mr Jones, who lives with his wife Natalie and their one-year-old daughter Mia, said they had hoped to sell their Caerphilly home and move before their fixed-rate term expired but had not received any major interest since the launch a few months ago.
“I think we knew there was going to be quite an upswing [in our mortgage repayments]. I don’t think we were aware of that,” Niall said.
“When we started receiving reminders from a mortgage provider a few months ago we could have renewed for just over an extra £100 a month, but we’ve now settled on £170.”
“We’re paying from £803 a month to £970.”
Wales Live is available on BBC iPlayer
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