THE panic selling of homes that some property experts had forecast months ago has not materialised after all - not this year, anyway.

Market watchers had previously warned that the negative sentiment in the property market - which stemmed from the United States sub-prime crisis late last year and persists still - might prompt property investors to offload their uncompleted units at fire-sale prices and drive home prices down.

But a recent analysis by Savills Singapore found that almost everyone who sold a private apartment or condominium unit in the sub-sale market in the first seven months of this year pocketed robust gains.

This implies that, for this year at least, property investors are still sitting on comfortable profits and are likely to be in no hurry to exit their investments, said Savills' director of business development and marketing, Mr Ku Swee Yong.

'The cost of holding on to properties is quite low right now because of low interest rates, so for those who haven't already exited the market, there's no urgency to sell,' he added.

When an individual buys an uncompleted property and resells it before it has been built, the transaction is called a sub-sale.

Such sales are often used to measure property speculation, since sub-sale sellers are often short-term investors who never intended to occupy their units.

Read the full story in tomorrow's edition of The Sunday Times.