From the very beginning I thought the properties panel was pointless.
One thing that would make it somewhat usefull is apart from showing ordinary transform propertiesit would also show Essential properties for a selected precomp if it has any.
We can access Position Rot Scale and Opacity with key triggers, so they are never out of reach, but the Essential Properties always take a lot of clicking to reach - if we could have access to them through the properties panel it would be awesome.