Reports were out on Thursday that General Electric Co. (NYSE: GE) is close to selling a large part of its real estate holdings. As the company aims to shrink its finance and capital business, it seems as though the real estate portfolio would be the most logical space to look, outside of other credit receivables. After all, $30 billion worth of investments in apartments, office buildings, commercial properties and loans might be an easy way to raise capital and to divest away from such a high degree of financial assets.

The Wall Street Journal reported that GE is in talks with Blackstone Group L.P. (NYSE: BX) and Wells Fargo & Co. (NYSE: WFC) for parts of its entire real estate portfolio. While the Wall Street Journal said that a deal could be announced soon, 24/7 Wall St. would warn its readers that it is nearly impossible to determine what the size of the real sale might be — let alone what assets really get sold.

What seems fairly obvious is that GE would be able to do a substantial clean-up in one swoop here. As a reminder, General Electric is trying to become valued by the market as an industrial conglomerate rather than a conglomerate that is tied to a bank and consumer finance. The coming spin-off of Synchrony Financial (NYSE: SYF) and the IPO of that giant last year are just one part of moving away from being tied to so much consumer finance.

Whatever GE really ends up selling off, the end game will be that the GE of 2020 seems to have much less emphasis on investments and finance as it will have in large industrial efforts. The financial crisis punished GE far worse than it did other conglomerates, to the point that GE had to get an expensive Warren Buffett investment at the time as an “all clear” sign.

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GE has real estate ownership, but it also has exposure to debt that has been issued by many property owners. Because of this, and without being in the closed door talks, it is impossible to predict which assets would be sold and how large the total asset sales are.

It is interesting that Blackstone and Wells Fargo were pointed out in the report. Both have the appetite and the capital to do deals — big deals, too. Blackstone has been raising capital of late, and Wells Fargo is in the same boat as other big banks looking for ways to fill gaps in their loan portfolios.

24/7 Wall St. has requested a clarification on what properties and assets might be included here, but no comment or clarification has yet been received. As a reminder, we showed not too long ago that Merrill Lynch tried to highlight what a post-finance GE would look like for 2016 and beyond. In fact, GE was recently reiterated as Buy with a $31 price objective by Merrill Lynch. Also, we included an outlook on the matter in our own GE 2015 Bull and Bear Outlook.

Another issue that investors need to consider is that it seems unlikely a deal would be announced immediately. Asset sales that come out in the media to multiple buyers do not generally occur overnight.

As far as what $30 billion, or a fraction of $30 billion, might mean for GE, the conglomerate has a market cap of about $257 billion. It goes without saying that deciphering GE’s balance sheet of 2014 into a post-Synchrony and post-financial services (and ex-GE Appliances) balance sheet still remains a bit of guesswork.

GE shares were up 2.5% at $25.64 in late-Thursday trading. GE’s 52-week trading range is $23.41 to $27.53, and the consensus analyst target price is almost $28.50.

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