The UK vote to leave the European Union whipsawed capital markets throughout the world, but the carnage got so bad in the market for open-ended UK real-estate funds that some managers decided to freeze redemptions.

Now, with some of those redemption halts going into their third month, a debate has surfaced in the industry between the firms that opted to redeem and those that didn't. The question: Which ones prepared better for the market shock in the months leading up to the Brexit vote and made the smarter calls in terms of opening or shutting their redemption gates?