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I would be careful about taking a chapter apartment with your numbers where they are and also being a new chapter. On my college campus the fraternities whose numbers hovered around 25ish had houses built back in the early 1900's in the hey day of fraternities and house 30 men. During my four years, they were always struggling to fill the house and often (to an outsider) seemed to bid people to get the numbers. One of the most famous moments when XYZ convinced the entire baseball team to move in, in return for free cable, laundry and beer for the year. The houses other alternative was to lose it or take random students. Finally, last year, one of the fraternities lost their house on College Street (our Greek row) and now has a smaller house a block off the row. It was pretty heartbreaking to hear after all the struggle they lost it.
My chapter has a house with 10 women, a move up from our first house with 4 people and that is about 1/2 to 1/3 of our chapter. I would not suggest having a space that puts more than 1/2 to 1/3 of your chapter living together unless you have a chapter culture where people expect and can live in the house. There is nothing worse than having reslife call you mid summer because a sister punked out of living in. The other advange we've found is that when recruitment is hard and you have women living amongst non-greeks, it can be a great way to meet new pnms.
Houses sound like fun and are, but there is a ton of committment involved and are not ideal for every chapter. I would take the road of caution and not take a house at this point. If/when your numbers are 15 or higher, I would suggest looking into it. Meanwhile make an effort to always have a few sisters in an apt together so you at least have somewhere that you can all meet if need be.
I hope this helps!
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