Our yard is north facing and drops into a canyon. In addition to shade and height (so as not to shade out lower growing trees and plants), another consideration needs to be temperature - the lower elevations in our yard see much more extreme swings in summer and winter. Within our yard, I have tried planting stuff all over the place over the last 10 years - with a lot of failures early on.
I have learned to keep things in pots for longer than I normally would, and test out different locations in the yard.
My in-ground plants/trees include:
Tropical/Sub-Tropical:
Mangos
Guava (Asian, Tropical White, Red Malaysian)
Lemon Guava
Jaboticaba
Passiflora
Banana
Cherimoya
Atemoya
Sugar Cane
Inga
Grumichama (E. brasilensis)
Pitanga (Surinam Cherry)
Temperate:
Citrus (Valencia Orange, Cara Cara, Eureka Lemon, Key Lime)
Stone Fruit (Apricot, Peach, Nectarine, Plum, Plumcot)
Blueberries
Boysenberry
Fig
Grapes
Avocado
Cherry
Feijoa
Apple
Pear
Pomegranate
In addition to the plants listed above, my neighbors (with same north facing slope) also are growing:
macademia
loquat
grapefruit
pomelo
kumquat
And I'm probably forgetting some. The last frost 2 weeks ago killed my third attempt at growing Papaya on the slope... if I can get one to survive through one winter, I'm positive I can get it to fruit here - I've seen plenty fruiting nearby. I also have a lot of plants in containers waiting to go into the ground (right spot, right time, right size, etc) including Cambuca and a Brazilian Guava, both of which are doing very well.
So, north facing hillside doesn't guarantee death to your plants - but we're not putting in a pool anytime soon, and if you have an opportunity to buy property that faces south/southwest, well... I would.