Chip - my friends and I just went through this. We wanted to do the house thing but a lot of places were off-limits because of (lame) "no roommates" clauses.
On one hand that pissed me off, but I also understand the desire of people not to have a bunch of rowdy Ensigns living next door... and the desire of landlords not to have us patching holes in the walls, tearing up the lawn, etc. Not having a house will somewhat limit the level of stupidity... I mean you can't play stump in an apartment...
Anyway we ended up going with the apartment option, just to make it easier on us. I haven't actually seen it (I had to take the word of the other guys) but I hear our place at Countrywood @ Blue Angel is pretty nice. We will also be pocketing some money since the rent isn't very steep (~1000 for a 2BR, 2BA).
[offtopic]I eagerly await horror stories about my apartment complex now that I wrote that...[/offtopic]
BTW... REMAX flat out lied to us about one place, wasting hours of valuable time trying to get a cashiers check in when someone had already signed a lease on the house we were looking at. I will
never do business with them ever again. They're either incompetent or just complete a-holes.