Does have a wordpress platform blog versus a non wordpress platform blog help you at all in the serps?
Yes. It doesn't matter what platform you use. The important is how you build links and how you promote your site.
I would suggest using wordpress platform compared to other blogging platforms like Blogger, typepad etc
when it comes to stuff like this, "blog or website?", "static or dynamic?" there is no real "better" choice when it comes to search engines. Choose the blog platform that will work for you and does what you need it to do. Trust me, crawlers don't give special value to certain platforms, in fact your sometimes better trying to be "unique" out of the group.
The reason I asked, I noticed when I post on my word press blog it gets index within 24 hours. Its its own domain. On my other blog that is /blog off my real estate site seems like it doesn't get indexed as quick. I thinking because my blog posts show up on wordpress.com
Correct Badgely, Because your posts appear on wordpress.com, they indexed fairly quickly. The more a site is updated frequently, more quickly bot pays a visit to gobble up the new content. Established blogs who generate content at consistent pace, get their posts indexed in less than 12 hours. Example is engadget, techcruch, mashable....
I'm using a blogspot and I experienced not only once but many times that my new post was indexed in less than an hour. The reason why your new post got indexed in a short time is, if your site/blog was already established, spiders will easily crawl your site.
Correct. In fact, had you not mentioned that, I would have. And yet WordPress has some serious SEO issues out of the box as well.