The latest figures released on UK house prices suggest that the market will take more than four years to rise above their 2007 peak, a wide-ranging survey of experts has warned.

The hopeless report was delivered by more than 60% of 225 Society of Business Economists (SBE) members surveyed for ITV1's Tonight programme. The forecast reveals that house prices could fall by up to 20% from the top of the market, according to 56% of respondents - although 20% took an even more pessimistic view, forecasting property values could slump by as much as 30%.

But this news comes after Nationwide announced that it has increased its mortgage rates to new borrowers for the second time in two weeks. Some of the rates have shot up by as much as 0.5% which means that a number of deals now charge rates of more than 75%. The borrowers that have been hit hardest are those without a substantial deposit.

More than half the experts from banks, building societies and industry said house prices would fall by between 6% and 10% this year. The market will hit rock-bottom in 2009, according to 44% of those surveyed. The SBE's chairman, Bronwyn Curtis, also warned recent buyers could have to wait “a long time” to get their money back.

She told the programme: “It doesn't look like we're going to see a fall, which is what we're in the middle of, and a quick bounce back. It does look as though it's going to go on, and we'll have slow growth for some time.

“On top of that, house prices were overvalued, according to most economists, and so you have the situation where they remain undervalued for a long time.”

The survey is the latest addition to a steady stream of miserable news on the housing market, which saw share prices in the UK's major housebuilders hammered last week. However, Nation, Britain’s biggest building society have justified the sharp increase in rates by pointing out that rates on the swaps market, where banks and building societies go to raise their funding, have soared in recent weeks.

Matthew Carter, divisional director for mortgages at Nationwide, said: “As a building society we always aim to offer our members the best possible deals. However, we have seen continued large rises in money market rates together with further competitor activity and as a result it has been necessary to increase the rates on our range of mortgages.

Latest figures from the Nationwide and Halifax building societies show hefty price falls during May, while the number of homes changing hands also slumped to a 30 year low as the credit crunch continued to put pressure on the property market.

This could be the beginning of a much unstable property market with new figures showing that estate agents sold an average of just 17 properties each during the three months to the end of May, according to the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors. It is the lowest figure since it first began collecting data in 1978.