If you don’t have a blog incorporated into your website, here are a few places you should evaluate for starting a blog.

Find a Free Real Estate Blog in an Established Community

There are many places to start a free blog.  You’d want to find a blog community that focuses on real estate to give your blog more credibility than a general site like Blogger, for example.

You’d also want to establish your blog in a community that will improve your chances of being noticed by the search engines.  Just as Squidoo lenses get more attention from the search engines because of the strength of the Squidoo community, there are equivalents in the world of real estate blogging.

Check These Real Estate Blog Communities

Here are three communities that fit the criteria mentioned above, in alphabetical order.

Active Rain – If you’re not a member of the Active Rain community yet, you might want to join even if you don’t host your blog there.  The community has over 36,000 members from many different real estate related industries.  It’s a great place to chat with and learn from other real estate professionals.
 
A free blog is included with your membership, and you can indicate whether your blog entries can be seen by community members only (for topics you want to discuss with other professionals) or by consumers (home buyers/sellers).  I have seen feedback on several blogs that indicate consumers do contact members based on their consumer-oriented blog posts.

RealTown – RealTown is a real estate community founded by the folks at Internet Crusade.  You may be familiar with their RealTalk listserv/forum, e-Pro courses and forum, and they provide a variety of other services to the industry.

I tried out one of their blogs and found it very user-friendly.  And your blog will get the advantage of being in a strong authority site for the industry.

Real Estate Webmasters – This is the newest community from a blogging standpoint.  It is sponsored by the same people who established the Real Estate Webmasters forum.  So, while their blog community is relatively new, the blogs share the search engine love from their established forum.  If you want a free listing in the directory, keep in mind that a link on your home page is required, but there are other alternatives (see this post’s comments).