Real property is unique and with that goes unique laws and ethical requirements, one who has dealt in personal property cannot assume that a strategy dealing in used cars is okay in real estate!

Writing that as an offer contingency would certainly be unique.

You will sign a promise at the closing table to move in, occupy as your primary, and live there for 12 months.

Meaning if it appraises at 575k then a conventional loan will use that as the value it bases the loan off any sale price higher than that would require the buyer to bring cash to the table on top of what ever percentage is required based on the loan type.  

Unless you have a unique way of generating a higher return and can attract investor capital or are investing your own self-directed IRA and buying in cash (most current buyers/hence long horizon), it's going to be tough for you. 

If you are going to pursue no money down financing you need to have a strong case for what you bring to the table and why you will not walk at the first sign of trouble.    

Zip Codes - the best data for zip codes comes from the US Census http://www.census.gov/quickfacts/table  There you can enter a zip code to get a very detailed picture of who lives there, how much money they make etc...Again once you have that data I would do a lot of Google research to see what is happening there.

Since you don't want to create the same list as everyone else, maybe look into creating unique mail pieces as well so you stand out from your competition.  

When figuring out the split, do we take into consideration the amount of money I brought to the table from the loan?  

Not sure if that's what happened, so I apologize if I am wrong.A friend of mine has reached out to me about RE and we still have to work out our strategy on paper and figure out exactly what we both will bring to the table to make this work.