The salad days of real estate investing are long behind us. But that hasn’t stopped emerging managers — loosely defined as firms with no more than $750 million and three funds under management — from proliferating in recent years, even as the bar that investors have set for manager selection has gotten even higher. Few pension funds have established emerging manager programs because the cost is steep. Despite all of this, many of the people in and around the emerging manager business still get frothy about the topic.

Let’s start with a bottom-line question: Is now a good or bad time to be an emerging manager?

The answer depends on whether you’re talking about the space or the individual firms that occupy the space. Emerging managers and the investment professionals who comprise their surrounding ecosystem are enthusiastic about emerging managers writ large. But individual emerging managers are in a mortal battle to win the precious