"Investors stayed prudent and selective in their purchases," property consultants Jones Lang LaSalle said in a report on residential investment sales, a term generally applying to property worth more than S$5 million (US$2.8 million).

Preliminary estimates showed major investment transactions in the July-September period totalled S$475.6 million, compared to S$1.09 billion in the previous quarter.

Private investment sales were at their lowest level since 1998, at the heart of the Asian financial crisis, and were not expected to pick up soon, said Terence Tang, Jones Lang LaSalle's head of investments in Singapore.

"This is because economic prospects are likely to remain unclear over the next three to six months in view of the impending US attack on Iraq," he said.

"Moreover, we have yet to see a strong return of regional buyers in the mid to high-end private residential sectors and there is still a fairly substantial amount of supply of such units."

Residential redevelopment sites accounted for 81 percent of the investment sales market in the third quarter.

Singapore only recently emerged from a year-long recession.

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