House prices will remain flat across London next year while those in the North West, the South East, the West Midlands and Yorkshire and Humberside will see the strongest growth, according to predictions from the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (Rics).

Property values across the UK are predicted by Rics to see 3% growth over 2015, but the London market, which was particularly heated in the first half of this year, is the only region expected to see no price increase next year.

Rics said that while the forecast was for a flat price trend in the capital overall, there could be "wide variations" in performance across the London boroughs.

Kensington and Chelsea and Westminster, and to some extent Camden and Hammersmith and Fulham, could be the places where house prices were the most negatively affected by the stamp duty reforms announced in the Autumn Statement earlier this month, it said.

While the vast majority of home buyers who are liable to pay stamp duty will be paying less duty under the new system, people buying homes at the very top end of the market will be paying more duty.

Meanwhile, the eastern boroughs of London could demonstrate a greater degree of resilience and could see house prices track higher, it said.

Overall, the recent changes to stamp duty, which mean that instead of paying the tax at a single rate on the entire property price a home buyer pays a graduated version of the tax, combined with a lack of homes to choose from, will bolster UK house prices next year, Rics said.

Across 2015, it expects property values to increase by 5% in the North West, the South East, the West Midlands and Yorkshire and Humberside, by 4% in Northern Ireland and Scotland, by 3% in the East of England, the East Midlands and the North East and by 2% in Wales and the South West.

Rics also predicts that house sales will edge up next year to 1.25 million, from 1.22 million in 2014.

The prediction follows a forecast from Halifax, which said it expected house prices to increase by between 3% to 5% next year.

Capital Economics expects values to climb by 6.5% next year, with a strong influence coming from the stamp duty reforms in both reducing buyers' up-front costs and boosting housing market sentiment.

Capital Economics has said it expects the stamp duty boost to price growth next year to be short-lived, "as buyers find that their stamp duty savings have been more than wiped out by the resulting rise in prices".

Jeremy Blackburn, head of UK policy at Rics, said: "We've seen four housing ministers in this Parliament and there is no reason to think that housing won't continue to be a political football in the next.

"What we need is certainty, clarity and confidence from government to keep us building homes.

"Reforms to stamp duty should underpin public confidence and lead to a greater number of housing transactions and we would now look to any future government to review council tax."