Housing market confidence is picking up following the vote to leave the EU, according to surveyors, with both property sales and prices expected to increase in the months ahead.

Surveyors expect house prices to increase by 3.3 per cent per year on average for the next five years, the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (Rics) found.

It followed the regular monthly survey which showed that in the North West, 7 per cent more agents reported an increase in buyer enquiries in August.

Meanwhile, interest from buy-to-let investors has dropped off particularly sharply over the past three months, while interest from first-time buyers and home movers fell to lesser degrees, the report said.

A stamp duty hike for second-home buyers, including buy-to-let investors, imposed on April 1 has been blamed for disrupting the housing market and causing sales to bunch up earlier in the year as buyers rushed to snap up properties before the deadline.

One surveyor quoted in the report said: "Our market is very much driven by second homes in the Lake District and is still suffering from the April stamp duty change."

The latest findings marks the most confident prediction given in the survey since the referendum vote, although not as strong as predictions made closer to the start of the year, when surveyors predicted annual price growth of more than 4 per cent.

The number of surveyors seeing house prices rising started to grow in August, following five months of the number slipping back.

A net balance of 12 per cent of surveyors reported house prices rising rather than falling in August, up from a balance of 5 per cent the previous month.

For the sixth month in a row, more surveyors in London reported prices falling rather than rising, but in most other parts of the UK, prices showed signs of increasing, Rics said.

For the first time since April, near-term house price expectations were generally positive in August, with a net balance of 10 per cent of surveyors expecting house prices to increase rather than decrease over the next three months.

Rics said a "real shortage of property for sale" is a key factor supporting house prices.

It said "this looks set to persist for a while yet," as the number of homes coming on the market fell back again during August and average stock levels on estate agents' books were close to record lows.