Sixth in a series breaking down real prompts our members run on Ora, and why the wording matters as much as the data underneath it.
Every real estate manager raising from U.S. public pensions learns the same lesson eventually: the pension is rarely the first door. Most public plans, and the large majority of sizable Taft-Hartley plans, rely on an investment consultant when they hire managers. The consultant builds the long list, screens the candidates, and walks a short list into the board meeting. If the consultant’s real estate research team does not already know your strategy when a search opens, you are usually not in it.
The default workflow ignores this. A manager builds a list of pensions with real estate allocations, finds the CIO and the head of real assets, and starts emailing. Pension staff are polite, then point you to the consultant. The consultant’s real estate team is polite too, and points you to their database. By then, the search you wanted may already be in a quiet period.
The prompt below starts at the right door. It does not ask who has the money. It asks who decides which managers a board ever gets to see.
The prompt
Find me the lead real estate research contacts at the top U.S. investment consultant firms that advise public pension funds and Taft-Hartley plans with $1B+ in assets on manager searches. I am raising a $900M core-plus real estate fund and need to identify which consultants are actively running or have recently completed core-plus or value-add real estate manager searches in the last 18 months. For each consultant firm, give me the name, title, email, and phone of the senior person responsible for real estate manager research and due diligence.
What nobody says out loud: the search is the wrong moment
By the time a public pension search is announced, it is mostly too late to get known. The work that wins searches happens before them, when a consultant’s real estate research team decides which strategies it rates and shows to clients.
Once a search opens, the rules tighten. A live example: the Policemen’s Annuity and Benefit Fund of Chicago ran a 2026 real estate debt search through its consultant, NEPC. The RFP was posted only on NEPC’s website, questions went in writing to NEPC’s search contact, and the document says, in so many words, no phone calls. A quiet period started June 18, 2026, and contacting board members during it meant disqualification. The same RFP notes that Illinois law bars placement agents and third-party marketers from these mandates. (PABF / NEPC RFP)
Some plans go further for private real estate. The Los Angeles Fire and Police Pension System applies its marketing cessation policy to real estate funds for as long as they are open to new business. During that time, contact with staff and the consultant is limited to set channels, and any firm invited to interview must list every contact with board members and consultants over the prior three months or the search period, whichever is longer. Violations mean automatic disqualification. (LAFPP policy)
That changes what the prompt is for. The useful output is not a call sheet for live searches. It is a map of which consultant research teams are hiring core-plus and value-add managers right now, so you can be known to them before their next client’s search opens. One positive rating from a consultant’s real estate team can put you in front of many plans at once. One badly timed phone call can take you out of a search entirely.
Taft-Hartley money adds a second filter. These plans are run by joint labor and management trustees and are generally covered by ERISA (John Hancock). In real estate, many also expect a Responsible Contractor Policy, a hiring preference for contractors who pay fair wages and benefits. The AFL-CIO has backed the policy since 1997, urging union trustees of multiemployer and public funds to adopt it, and CalPERS and New York State Common Retirement Fund were early adopters (AFL-CIO). A core-plus manager without one should expect hard questions from Taft-Hartley consultants, and from many public ones too.
The anatomy
“Find me the lead real estate research contacts.” The right target, and the one most managers skip. A consultant usually has two people who matter to you: the research lead who rates real estate managers, and the field consultant who advises each plan. The research lead decides whether your fund is on the list at all. The field consultant decides whether it gets recommended to a given board. This prompt asks for the first. A stronger version asks for both, labeled separately.
“At the top U.S. investment consultant firms.” The weakest phrase in the prompt, because “top” has no definition. Ranked by total advised assets, the list will lead with generalists. But real estate consulting is often a separate contract. Hawaii’s state pension, for example, ran its own search in 2017 for a nondiscretionary real estate consultant (IREI). A better instruction: rank consultants by how many qualifying plans use them as the real estate consultant of record.
“That advise public pension funds and Taft-Hartley plans with $1B+ in assets.” Two client types, two rulebooks. Public plans answer to state law, procurement policy and quiet periods. Taft-Hartley plans answer to ERISA and to boards split between labor and management trustees. Naming both is right. The $1B floor will trim the Taft-Hartley side more than the public side, so make sure that is intended.
“On manager searches.” A quiet but useful filter. It points Ora at consultants who run open competitions, rather than those who only monitor portfolios or invest with discretion on a client’s behalf.
“I am raising a $900M core-plus real estate fund.” This gives Ora the fit test, but it leaves out the vehicle. Open-end and closed-end funds are often searched for separately, and plans treat them differently. Los Angeles Fire and Police notes that closed-end real estate funds open and close sporadically, while open-end funds are generally open to new business most of the time, so its marketing limits apply to them almost continuously (LAFPP policy). Add “open-end” or “closed-end” to the prompt. Size also matters: the Chicago police fund’s 2026 real estate debt search required a target fund size of at least $500 million (PABF / NEPC RFP), a bar this raise clears.
“Actively running or have recently completed core-plus or value-add real estate manager searches in the last 18 months.” The strongest clause, because it asks for behavior instead of reputation. Two refinements. First, “actively running” usually means a quiet period is in force, so treat those rows as context, not a call list. Second, a consultant rarely runs a search alone: the plan’s board decides, with the consultant overseeing the process. Ask for the plan, the consultant, the mandate size and the winning managers for each search. Including value-add is smart, because plans file core-plus in different buckets, and a value-add search may be the one your fund fits.
“Name, title, email, and phone of the senior person responsible for real estate manager research and due diligence.” The schema is clean, but the channel is wrong for this audience. The Chicago RFP asks for no phone calls, and Los Angeles Fire and Police makes interview candidates list every consultant contact. Keep name and title. Replace phone with the consultant’s manager submission route, and add one more field: any quiet period currently in force at that consultant’s clients.
What you do with the output
- Sort consultants by recent behavior, not size. A mid-sized consultant that ran three core-plus searches last year matters more to this raise than a giant that ran none.
- Get into the database before you ask for a meeting. Submit through each consultant’s manager intake route first, with a complete core-plus track record. A research lead is far more likely to take a call about a strategy already in front of them.
- Read the completed searches for intelligence. The winners show you what each consultant currently rates in core-plus, and what you will be compared against next time. Board minutes and posted RFPs usually tell you the mandate size and the finalists too.
- Log every quiet period before any outreach. Check each plan’s live searches and policies, and keep a record of every consultant contact. Some plans will ask for that list at interview.
- Have a Responsible Contractor Policy ready before Taft-Hartley conversations. If your firm does not have one, write it before you approach consultants with labor clients, not after the first question about it.
Variants
Here is the prompt rewritten with the changes above:
I am raising a $900M closed-end core-plus real estate fund. Identify the U.S. investment consultants that act as real estate consultant of record for public pension funds and Taft-Hartley plans with $1B+ in assets, ranked by the number of core-plus or value-add real estate manager searches they oversaw in the last 18 months. For each consultant, list the plans, mandate sizes and winning managers for those searches, any quiet periods currently in force, the head of real estate manager research (name and title), the field consultant for each plan, and the consultant’s manager submission process.
Three swaps that each open a different channel:
- Swap Taft-Hartley for endowments and foundations, and ask for consultants and outsourced CIOs that have added core-plus managers to their approved lists. The rules are lighter, and approved lists can be the whole game.
- Swap core-plus for real estate debt. Searches like the Chicago police fund’s 2026 mandate show consultants running credit searches inside the real estate allocation.
- Keep everything and swap “completed searches” for “real estate consultant changes in the last 24 months.” A plan that just hired a new real estate consultant is about to see a fresh manager line-up.
Each is the same three ingredients: a client universe, an observed behavior, and an output you can act on without breaking anyone’s rules.
Why this is a prompt and not a database query
No field in a conventional investor database is called “consultant that oversaw a core-plus search for a $1B+ Taft-Hartley plan in the last 18 months.” That fact is spread across consultant websites, board packets and minutes, RFP documents, quiet-period notices and trade press. Pulling it together by hand takes days per refresh, so it usually gets done once and goes stale.
Ora reasons across those sources and returns the synthesis with its working shown, so you can check a search date or a mandate size against the board document before you act on it. The prompt is the specification. The more precisely you write the constraints, the less time you spend cleaning the output.
One practical note: quiet periods and contact rules are set plan by plan and change with each search. Confirm the current status on the plan’s own site before any outreach, route submissions through each consultant’s official process, and keep a log of every contact. The list gets you to the right research teams. Earning the rating is still your job.
This is the sixth post in Prompt Anatomy, where we take a real prompt run on Ora and break down why it is written the way it is. Have one you want dissected? Send it to info@octum.ai.
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