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In an unprecedented warning, four leading experts raised concerns that the housing market could be teetering on a knife-edge for the next decade.
They included accountants PricewaterhouseCoopers, thE Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors a leading economic consultancy and the Council of Mortgage Lenders.
Their warnings will worry millions of homeowners who have bought in recent years and comes amid a backdrop of reduced availability of home loans as banks - still recovering from the Credit Crunch- seek to rebuild their profits.
The first warning, from PricewaterhouseCoopers, said house prices could remain below their peak levels for the next decade.
This will directly affect around 3.6m people who have bought a property since house prices reached record levels in 2007.
Millions of homeowners have stretched themselves to the limit by taking out a supersize mortgage, but fear their property may never be worth as much money again.
PricewaterhouseCoopers says there is a '50% chance' that your home will be worth less in 2020 than it was in 2007.
John Hawksworth, head of macroeconomics at PricewaterhouseCoopers, warned: 'House prices remain vulnerable to setbacks.'
His analysis is based on 'real' house prices, that is the value of your home adjusted for normal inflation. A second report says prices could plunge by 25% over the next three years, wiping nearly £40,000 off the average house price.
This means the value of your home could drop to a level not seen since 2003, according to the research by the consultancy Capital Economics.
Ed Stansfield, chief property economist, blamed 'the huge scale of the fiscal squeeze we are about to see', such as rising unemployment and 'further pressure' on household incomes. His forecast is that prices will drop 5% this year, followed by 10% in each of the following two years.
If correct, this would mean the average house price, which was £162,000 at the end of last year, would drop to just £125,000 by the end of 2012.
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