To be honest, Columbia seems(from what I can tell) to have a great balance of schools for the kids, commute time to my potential job, and acceptable housing prices(however, coming from central PA, most of Maryland seems vastly expensive). I think those would be my top 3 interests; Safety, Schools, housing prices. I checked up the 270(the towns stemming off of it going NW away from Rockville) and most things seemed to be atleast 500k. I found multiple very nice options in Columbia in the 400s.