Which home would you take?

Ok so my g/f and I are moving in together this month. We’ve been set for a couple months to move into a townhouse. The townhouse is part of a larger rental property which I’ve lived at before, and is not far from where she lives now. It’s almost entirely populated with college students from nearby Ohio State (for reference we are both 26, so not far removed). When I lived there before (2007/8) I had no issues with the management or the environment/neighbors. The property is under new management now, a national company which I actually live under now, but I still haven’t had any major problems. The rent is going to be almost $900/month, not counting utilities. And that’s on a 1 year lease.

Well last Friday my older brother, who also lives in town, threw us a curve-ball. He’s an engineer for Honda, and he just received an offer to work at GM, up in M*chigan. If he accepts the offer, which would nearly double his pay and have him working in supposedly one of the best facilities in the car industry (fun and tech), he has to move out of his house by the end of this month. He just bought his house barely 6 months ago, and lives there currently with his long time g/f. He was interested in seeing if my g/f and I would want to rent his house. It’s a Cape-Cod style house, probably about twice the overall size of the townhouse we were looking at. Full yard and an un-attached 2-car garage. It’s a residential neighborhood as opposed to mostly college kids. The area is very near (3–5 blocks away from) a shaky part of Columbus. This is honestly our biggest hold up. It’s also within a mile of 3 churches (one is across the street), and adjacent to the back yard is a school. We would be taking over his mortgage payment (still in his name, our rent would just be the payment), $650/month plus utilities. Also we wouldn’t have to sign a long term lease, so long as we let him know our plans as far ahead of time as possible.

The crime potential being our biggest concern, I pulled up the Columbus PD’s crime map and zoomed in on both locations (and our current apartments for comparison). I put the locations in the middle of the map, so it’s about ½ a mile in every direction on the map, and set it back as far as it would go… 6-months. Here’s what I found:
The Townhouse- 10 acts of vandalism, 10 breaking and entering acts, 4 acts of theft, 2 assaults, and 2 sex offenders (28 total). It’s worth mentioning here that around 10 of all of these events were located on the other side of a major freeway which bisected the immediate east of the townhouse. A majority of the incidents on the Townhouses side of the freeway took place in the rental complex. 5–7 were within a few blocks of the Townhouse.

My Brothers House- 15 acts of breaking and entering, 9 acts of theft, and 1 act of vandalism (25 total). Only ~6 of the acts were within a couple blocks of the house itself. Almost none of the acts were to the south of the house, a much nicer residential area. To the north, where most of the acts occurred, you eventually come to the crappy part of town. With a school in the back yard there are no sex offenders anywhere in site, and on the plus the incidence of violent crime is very low.

My g/f’s apt now- 3 acts of vandalism, 2 acts of breaking and entering, 4 thefts, and 4 assaults (13 total). Most of these events were on the perimeter of the mile range around her apartment. Worth noting that directly north of her apartment is a business area and a road, so there isn’t really anything to burgle.

My current apartment- 5 acts of breaking and entering, 5 thefts, and 2 acts of vandalism (12 total). Only 2 crimes occurred within a few blocks of my apartment. But again, worth mentioning that a major freeway is directly south of my apartment, and it chewed up a pretty good chunk of the map. Also to the west of my apartment is a largely wooded area.

What would your advice/opinion be? We’re going tonight to check out the area of the house at night, and talk to my brother… so we can make our final decision.. pending his final decision.