One of the housebuilders which became indirectly owned by British taxpayers after the 2008 banking crisis is preparing for a sale or stock market listing valuing it at more than £700m.

Sky News has learnt that shareholders in Keepmoat Homes, which is based in Doncaster, have hired Barclays and Moelis, the investment banks, to explore a so-called ‘dual-track’ process for the company.

Keepmoat has been owned by TDR Capital – which has just engineered the takeover of Asda – and Sun Capital, the vehicle set up by Hugh Osmond, one of the UK’s best-known entrepreneurs, since 2014.

The pair of investors acquired the business from Lloyds Banking Group in 2014 after Britain’s biggest high street lenders had been left with an equity stake in it after the financial crash.

Lloyds ended up as Britain’s biggest owner of housebuilders, eventually selling companies such as Crest Nicholson, Cala and McCarthy & Stone.

Insiders said they estimated Keepmoat to be worth between £700m and £800m, and said the current owners were open-minded about a sale or an initial public offering of the business.

Keepmoat describes itself as the UK’s seventh-biggest housebuilder as measured by the number of homes it builds each year, and says on its website that the average selling price for its homes is £161,000 – well below the current national average.

It adds that almost a third of its homes are sold to housing associations and the private rented sector, with the remainder sold to first-time buyers.

Keepmoat is run by Tim Beale, a former Crest Nicholson executive.

TDR declined to comment on Thursday, while Sun could not be reached for comment.

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