The Enquirer understands that volume house builders have been approached in the last few weeks ahead of a formal sale process being initiated.

A potential sale comes as volume house builders report a more optimistic outlook about the marketplace with land transactions starting to pick-up.

The city has also been anticipating further M&A activity following the announcement of Barratt’s £2.5bn takeover of rival volume house builder Redrow.

According to a Sky News report, L&G has now lined up Rothschild to handle the auction of the house building group with a potential price tag for the business floated at around £750m.

L&G bought Cala Homes back in 2018.  In its last full set of accounts for 2022, Cala sold more than 3,000 homes and employed 1,300 staff.

At that time it reported revenue of £1.4bn and pre-tax profit of 169m with a contracted landbank estimated to have an £8.8bn development value.