Cities Where Real Estate is Hot;
Affordable Northeast Suburbs

Here's a look at what's new in real-estate markets across the U.S. from around the Web. (Some links may require registration or subscriptions.)

'Affordable' Northeast Suburbs

For people looking for an "affordable" place to live in the Northeast -- where the median home price ($265,900) is higher than that for the U.S. overall ($212,800) -- BusinessWeek has come out with a list of 20 city suburbs that offer reasonable housing prices, low crime rates and quality education. While these places offer housing prices that may be attractive for these locales, they may not appear to be so for home buyers coming from say, the South or the West, BusinessWeek says. (For instance, one town that made BusinessWeek's list -- Norwood, N.J., has a median home price of $671,000.) Accompanying the article is a slideshow spotlighting the top 20 picks.

Real estate's hot on TV

The housing market looks grim these days, but you wouldn't know it by the proliferation of real-estate related "reality" shows on television, according to an article published by the Kansas City Star. The article lists a dozen real-estate focused programs, shown on TV channels HGTV, TLC and A&E. The shows' popularity rests on their combination of down-to-earth how-to tips, voyeurism and drama, the Star says. For instance, while TLC's "Property Ladder" has profiled experienced home flippers, it usually chooses to spotlight novice flippers, with most investors' plans ending in a "train wreck," the article says.

Wealth spurs demand

Affluent real-estate markets like Manhattan, Seattle, San Francisco and sections of Los Angeles are expected to escape the housing slowdown, largely because of their low numbers of subprime mortgage borrowers, says a Reuters article published by Yahoo News. Meanwhile, across the U.S. as a whole, a high rate of subprime defaults are expected to bring down real-estate prices by spurring foreclosures, the article says. The article contrasts March's home sales in San Francisco -- where housing costs tend to be high -- and California's Central Valley, which has a plentiful stock of entry-level housing. In March, the median home price rose 5.6% in San Francisco from a year earlier to $785,380, while in Central Valley, home prices dropped 5.6% in a year's period to $331,450, Reuters says.

Philadelphia holds its own

Philadelphia is weathering the housing slowdown well, according to an article published by the Philadelphia Inquirer. The city and its seven surrounding counties saw median home prices rise during the first quarter of this year, the article says.  The average sale price in Center City has increased 8% a year since 1986, the Inquirer says. In the first three months of this year, Philadelphia-area homes took just two weeks longer on average to sell than they did a year earlier, and existing-home sales fell only 5.3% compared to the same period in 2006 -- versus the 11.3% year-over year decline in homes sales seen in March across the U.S., according to the article. Attributed to the local market's strength are: relatively low median home prices, a small amount of foreclosure activity and just a modest run-up in home prices during the housing boom.

Rents rise amid slowdown

The glut in the housing market will create a drag on the rental market, says an article posted on Bloomberg.com. In the first quarter, the percentage of vacant rental apartments in the U.S. increased to 6.1%, the highest rate in nearly two years, the Web site says. Additionally, the percentage of vacant homes for sale reached a record 2.8% in the first quarter, according to the Web site. Increasing vacancies are also leading to a softening in the market for apartment real-estate investment trusts, Bloomberg.com says. The increase in the number of apartments for rent is expected to negatively pressure home prices, as well as derail chances for a real-estate recovery near-term, the article says.  Relatively unaffected by the slowdown is New York, which in the first quarter had a vacancy rate of 2.5% -- the lowest in the U.S. -- and an average monthly rental rate of $2,605.

Ms. Kim is a senior editor at RealEstateJournal.com

Join a reader discussion about the housing market.

Send links to articles about residential-real-estate markets to Lauren Kim at lauren.kim@wsj.com.

Email your comments to lauren.kim@wsj.com.