Keep everything on one site, or create a 'plug'

I'm a Realtor and I obviously have my real estate site. Trying to create as many pages (mainly community/subdivisions) and info on it I can for SEO purposes. I'm in a decent size city, just below a major city in the USA.

Would it be better if I create a 'news' site for my area and also try to market that, pointing back to my main real estate site? Or should I just keep all news on my blog on my real estate site?

The reason I'm questioning this is there is a competitor that ranks amazingly well on nearly all the community keywords and they have their site setup as real only, and a separate 'blog and news' site linking back to their real estate site. From what I can tell their blog/news site doesn't get much traffic, it's merely just for link building.

Thoughts?

Thanks!!!

Hey ,
Also an agent, I'm in the same predicament as you.

I thought about building a "local PBN" for services (think plumber) who don't have a site.

Im at the stage of paralaysis, my business is great but I really want to stop cold calling and feel that this is my best option.