When the subprime debacle that is crippling the real estate industry across the country began hitting the front page of newspapers, Ryan Czepiel read the coverage but paid closer attention to his broker’s Web log. “I read about what’s going on in Atlanta, Detroit, and the Midwestern states,” he said. “But I wanted to know how it directly impacts me in Manhattan, where I live and work and would be interested in buying.”

Mr. Czepiel is among a class of worried buyers and sellers who have turned during an uncertain period not to economists but to their brokers. Throughout the industry, brokers have created files of articles that talk up New York City’s “bulletproof” or “insulated” real estate economy; they also have begun posting on their professional Web sites information to diffuse the panic brought on by ominous headlines.

“The blog is my way of providing clients with real-time information,” Mr. Czepiel’s broker and the principal of A Fine Company, Andrew Fine, said. Fifteen minutes after the Federal Reserve slashed interest rates last week, Mr. Fine put a post up describing how the move was good for the city’s real estate economy, he said.

The worried e-mails and phone calls come most frequently from first-time buyers and buyers from out of state, a broker with Brown Harris Stevens, Daniel Ruiz, said.

A couple visiting the city were ready to buy an apartment, but one morning they came out of their hotel room with the New York Times, which had a frontpage story on the real estate woes across the country, Mr. Ruiz said. They backed out of the deal they were looking at and returned home to rethink their investment.

Mr. Ruiz has a checklist of reasons why the city, especially Manhattan, won’t go the way of the suburbs in Florida and Georgia. He tells clients that foreign buyers are still flocking to the city in large numbers, sales and rental data show no wane in demand generally, inventory is low, and people looking to live in the city are wealthy and less likely to be affected by the credit crunch.

“I am getting these calls constantly,” Mr. Ruiz said.

Still, forecasts about the market shouldn’t be pushed on people as absolute fact, a broker with Halstead, Charles Francis Hawkins, said.

“Good brokers don’t pretend to have a crystal ball,” he said. “I never promise anybody that they are going to make a ton of money on their property, but they have.” Mr. Hawkins said he explains to buyers that different forces are at work in Manhattan than in the rest of the country.

“As long as something disastrous doesn’t happen, like if the price of oil goes up to $120 a barrel, or the dollar slides another 10 to 20%, or layoffs are ubiquitous — a major recession — things are going to be okay,” he said. “Even if it did happen, Manhattan would be the first to bounce back.”

A vice president at Corcoran who also has a blog, Peter Comitini, said he tries not to encourage people to time the market.

“People don’t usually buy homes as an investment,” he said. “They are looking for a good neighborhood, a way to award themselves for working so hard.” Mr. Comitini said he shows buyers a 30-year chart, which climbs upward over the years with smaller ups and downs in between.

“My blog is an important tool for having a public conversation about the marketplace,” he said. “Broker blogs are one of the destinations that buyers are going to more and more now to get the skinny on what’s happening on the street.”