A Southend property expert has said Rishi Sunak can "forget winning the next General Election" if house prices fall by almost a third.

Yesterday, the Bank of England announced it would increase interest rates to 3 per cent - the biggest rise since 1989 - and warned the UK is facing its longest recession since records began.

Following the announcement,a mortgage lender warned house prices could fall by almost a third in the worst-case scenario.

Chris Rhodes, chief finance officer at Nationwide Building Society, told the Commons Treasury committee: "My best case is slowly increasing house prices and my worst case is potentially a 30 per cent per cent fall, but those are the two extremes which are tail probabilities."

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Reacting to the prediction, Riz Malik, director of Southend-based R3 Mortgages, says Prime Minister Rishi Sunak "may as well join Matt Hancock on I'm a Celeb" if this worst-case scenario occurs.

He said: “If the housing market drops 30 per cent, as some are predicting, Rishi can forget winning the next General Election and may as well join Matt Hancock on I'm a Celebrity.

"Regardless of how he performs against any other metric, he will be handing the keys to Number 10 to Keir Starmer.

"The number of people facing negative equity and repossessions would go through the roof.

"Our new PM is a clever guy. If anyone can find a solution to our current predicament that has been exacerbated by she-who-must-not-be-named, and he-who-wasn't-around-for-long-either, it is Rishi.”