Sunac China Holdings Ltd has agreed to buy a 49.3 percent stake in troubled Chinese property developer Kaisa Group, a report in financial news magazine Caixin said on Friday, citing an unidentified senior company executive.

The report came as Sunac announced a share trading suspension pending the release of an "announcement containing inside information in relation to the company."

The Caixin report said the firm would buy the stake from the founding Kwok family and that the two sides had recently signed an agreement. It did not give a dollar value for the deal.

The potential sale comes as Kaisa, a homebuilder based in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen, is struggling to meet its debt obligations following the abrupt departure of a string of its senior executives and a local government block on its property sales.

Chinese financial news website Yicai.com also reported on Friday that Shenzhen Overseas Chinese Town is likely to buy parts of Kaisa's assets involved in urban renewal projects.

If confirmed, the deals are likely to be seen as a sign of the Chinese government's resolve to prevent a large property developer from collapsing whilst making clear it will not pay for any bail out.

Officials from the Shenzhen government are believed to have been involved in the negotiations over what would happen to Kaisa, a source told Reuters earlier this week.

"The Chinese government has made it absolutely clear that it no longer is interested to be the last resort for struggling companies going forward," said Steve Wang, head of China Research for the REORIENT Group.

"Resolving the sudden collapse of Kaisa through the introduction of another private company allows market mechanism to play a key role, while balancing costs and benefits of picking up a distressed business."

However analysts said the relative good quality of Kaisa's assets in land scarce Shenzhen made the Sunac deal possible, and other property developers would struggle to reach a resolution so smoothly if they were to hit similar difficulties.

"It is a very isolated case due to the political nature and scarcity of Shenzhen land bank," said David Ng, Hong Kong-based research head at Macquarie Group.

A Sunac spokesman in Hong Kong declined to comment on the report and calls to the offices of Kaisa and Shenzhen Overseas Chinese Town went unanswered.

Kaisa missed an interest payment on one of its bonds earlier this month, leaving it facing the prospect of becoming the first Chinese homebuilder to default on its foreign debt.

Since its troubles began last year, Kaisa's bonds have lost as much as two-thirds of their value. In recent sessions there has been a recovery though, following reports there could be a buyer of the company's assets.

Kaisa bonds that are due to mature in 2020 and on which the coupon deadline was missed, leapt to an indicated quote of 76/79 cents on the dollar on Friday, a 16-point gain

Kaisa's shares have been suspended since December.