Please tell me the buyer is keeping your tank. Not only would it be awesome to sell to an MFK, obviously, but it'd be a real shame if you had to gut that one (and temporarily house the fish somewhere too).
As for the layout, to me it'd come down to how it'd blend into the rest of the basement layout. You can make an argument for both based just on the dimensions. How it fits the room would be the tiebreak to me.