Kaisa says sales unblocked at eight projects, gets loan for land buy

(Adds announcement about $225.6 mln loan from Sino Life) HONG KONG, April 9 (Reuters) - Chinese property developer Kaisa Group Holdings Ltd said Shenzhen city authorities have unblocked nearly all sales at eight residential developments, confirming that a key hurdle to its sale was being cleared. It also said a unit of a major shareholder would lend it 1.4 billion yuan ($225.62 million) for a previously arranged land purchase. Shenzhen city had blocked sales for undisclosed reasons at around 10 Kaisa developments in December, leaving Kaisa struggling to repay more than $10 billion in debt. Sunac China Holdings Ltd set removal of the sales blocks, as well as restructuring of the debt, as conditions to buy its smaller peer. Kaisa said in a statement that the website of Shenzhen's Urban Planning Land and Resources Commission indicated that only 3 percent of apartments at eight developments were blocked and 5 percent were frozen. Onshore creditors seeking repayment of debt have applied to the courts to freeze its assets. The developer said it had not received any formal notification of any change in the status of the properties but it was working with authorities to free up the remaining blocked apartments. The commission and Sunac declined to provide immediate comment. In a separate statement on Thursday, Kaisa said a subsidiary of Funde Sino Life Insurance Co, its second-largest shareholder, would provide a 1.4 billion yuan loan to finance part of a 5.4 billion yuan land acquisition the companies made jointly a year ago. Kaisa also said separately that, as of Tuesday, onshore creditors had filed 70 court applications to freeze its assets, while the court had made 28 rulings freezing assets valued at 14.8 billion yuan and spanning several developments. Onshore creditors could recoup money owed by asking the court to liquidate frozen assets. Offshore creditors, who are owed $2.5 billion, would only be able to recoup money from Kaisa, which would need to sell the assets to raise funds. Kaisa bonds were unchanged on Thursday after rising as much as 4.00 cents on the dollar on Wednesday. ($1 = 6.2050 Chinese yuan renminbi) (Reporting by Clare Jim; Editing by Christopher Cushing and Edmund Klamann)