City Lofts puts assets in receivership

LONDON (Reuters) - City Lofts has been forced to place 250 unsold apartments into receivership in light of Britain's housing slump, a spokesman for the privately owned urban apartment developer said on Tuesday.

The spokesman declined to specify how much of the overall business was affected.

City Lofts, partly owned by U.S. private equity firm JER Partners and investment bank Lehman Brothers LEH.N, was the first major British residential developer to fall victim to the credit crunch, an earlier report in trade magazine Property Week said.

The report said City Lofts creditor Bank of Scotland Corporate, part of Britain's biggest mortgage bank HBOS HBOS.L, had appointed Jon Gershinson of property services firm Allsop as a receiver on the unsold units as well as on a development site.

The assets are located in Manchester, Nottingham, Leeds, Liverpool, Cardiff and Birmingham.

Allsop could not be immediately reached for comment while Bank of Scotland declined to comment.

HBOS's loans and investment in housebuilding represent less than 1 percent of the group's balance sheet, but its stakes in groups including Crest Nicholson, McCarthy & Stone, Countryside Properties, Miller Group and Tulloch have become a growing concern for analysts in recent weeks.

(Reporting by William Kemble-Diaz; Editing by Erica Billingham, Leslie Gevirtz)