I'm looking for some rentable property in North NJ, and it's slow. Seems like inventory has gone up a bit over the past month, and not much is selling. Fine by me. Just more of the same that's been dished out since 2008. Oh yeah, and more foreclosures/shorts are coming onto the market.

Manhattan and downtown Brooklyn/Ft. Greene seem to be doing better -- I hear that average sale price is up, and I see quite a bit of new construction. But a lot of the prices going up has to do with middle to high end ($750k+) selling better, and also the data I've seen are from last month:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/03/realestate/brooklyns-gold-rush.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1

I'm going in for the long haul -- fix and rent, no desire to flip, so a stagnant market (for now) is just peachy in my book. If I see some appreciation over 2-3 years, that's gravy.

As far as my current neighborhood, so far so good. Rents have gone up at least 20% in the past year, and I see apartments selling for 10-15% over 2009 prices. It helps that quite a few buildings are friendly to foreign buyers, and there's a glut of those in NYC. NYC is actually (oddly) cheap per sq ft compared to many Western European and Asian cities. And if crises happen abroad, people could do worse than parking their money in US urban real estate. Manhattan, Boston/Camberville, downtown DC, San Fran, all of those markets weren't significantly hit by the property crisis.