Pat Wears, landlord of The Fountain Inn, London Road, North End, has seen his pub fall from a valuation of more than £130,000 in 2006 to between £40,000 and £50,000 in January this year.
Now with Chancellor Alistair Darling's attack on binge drinking in the Budget, during which alcoholic drinks were hit hard, he now thinks he will be lucky if he could get little more than £20,000, which could fall further with the average price of a pint of lager estimated to rise to £6.50 by the time of the 2012 Olympics, according to trade paper the Morning Advertiser.
In common with the industry, he believes Mr Darling should have focused his sights on supermarket offers as the problem instead of treating pubs as cash cows.
Mr Wears, 65, and his wife Rita had been hoping to retire and to sell the pub and a property they have in Turkey and use the proceeds to buy a house in the UK and to invest the rest.
Now their plans have been shattered, with the industry in freefall thanks to rising prices caused by tax, rises in the price of wheat and in energy, allied with the smoking ban, which for a pub that relies mainly on wet sales has been disastrous.
In the last six months the pair have already had to dip into their savings once, and fear they may have to again.
Nor are they alone, with at least four other Portsmouth landlords believed to be close to handing in their keys to their managers.
Mr Wears has what is known in the trade as a Whitbread lease, which means he is only partially tied to certain beers and all the takings in the machines are his alone.
Mr Wears said: 'The residue from the pub and the house in Turkey would have provided enough for a nice house in Portsmouth but now we can't afford to buy a house. I don't think this will do the country much good with the Olympics in 2012 when we will have a lot of foreign visitors over.'
He added: 'He's (Mr Darling] priced drinkers out of pubs because the ordinary guy can't afford to drink. Pubs have always been a great British tradition.'