Windows are your best fiend friend. Find a single window inbetween two walls, smash it, get a hammer/nail bat or board/something with good bash and some cut. que. profit.
Alright, tried doing it this way on !!classic spawn mode!! and did OK... managed to kill 40 or so zombies (which i realise isn't the aim of the game, but still) then got ambushed from the side by a fresh zombie; forcing me to abandon my house; resulted in a merry chase around the river bank with a hoarde of maybe a dozen zombies, then having to retreat across a bridge into a forest and get hunted by wolves until nightfall (which all targetted the chest, bloody powergaming wolves)
OK, I thought, as it started to get dark and that night vision perk suddenly became useful, I can still survive my first day! Wrong. During the chase the zombies had managed to shred all my clothing, meaning I got frostbite, I was then ambushed in what I thought was a safe forest by a web spider as I was trying to sleep under a tree, which proceeded to tear me to shreds. RIP me.
I try to find houses that are on protrusions from the town proper. It seems that zombies spawn in a radius while houses can appear outside of said radius while still being part of the town so you can sometimes even find five or six houses you can loot without even seeing a zombie.
Hmm, in the story I have up there, my evac shelter was right next to a megastore, do those give increased spawnrates in the area around them perchance? it would certainly explain why I saw so many zombies as compared to my first game (even if the end result was the same, heh).
Good idea with the looting of houses on the outskirts though, although your not really gonna get at the fabled gun stores, or pharmacies ((which I have seen on the map but yet to actually get to)) by doing it that way.
Overall, liking the game so far even if I haven't played very much nor got very far. From what I have read here, some of you have managed to build deathmachines out of cars, and make houses in the forests... ~envy~