SINGAPORE - Singapore private home prices surged 15.9 per cent in the third quarter from the previous quarter, preliminary government data showed on Thursday, highlighting concerns about a property market bubble.

Singapore's government last month announced measures to cool the property market by releasing more land and making it harder for home buyers to defer payments, but analysts said policymakers were likely to hold off on further measures for fear of derailing a still patchy economic recovery.

Singapore home prices started rising in Q2, analysts say, contrary to a 4.7 per cent decline for that quarter shown in the Urban Redevelopment Authority's index. Huge crowds have been snapping up units at new residential launches in Singapore.

"The numbers are backing up the anecdotal evidence we've seen - if anything they are understating it," said Vishnu Varathan, economist at 4CAST in Singapore. "Policymakers will be acutely aware of the risks of tightening too fast...At this point I think they will wait and see."

In less than a year, investors in Asia have gone from panic to hope and now to anxiety on concerns that potentially destabilising asset bubbles are forming in equity and property markets, even as the world is still healing from financial crisis.

For now, Asia's monetary authorities look set to do little about it, apart from possibly tinkering around the edges by soaking up excess liquidity.

Some analysts think rising house prices in Singapore, Hong Kong and China are yet to peak, given a preference for property among investors and a faster-than-expected economic recovery.

Shares in Singapore's largest property firm CapitaLand have more than doubled since a low in early March, outperforming the wider Singapore index's 74 per cent gain.

In August, Singapore maintained its 2009 forecast for the economy to contract by 4 to 6 per cent and said a subdued recovery was likely to continue in 2010 even after it leapt out of recession in the second quarter.