This is also where relationships help if you have a lender that you have been working with and he understands your overall financial position, he can be a bit more flexible; as @Jeff Dulla mentioned, I would wait until you are closer to actually making offers to get a pre-authorization.  

I would request financials from the sellers and tried to find commonalities, or trends. 

Even when buying multiple properties from the same seller at the same time, pretty much everything now is one to one - meaning one parcel, one contract.I've bought and sold a decent amount of properties, many purchases were directly from financial institutions, however there is only 1 occurrence in my life (7 years ago) that I purchased a bundle of assets on the same contract - and half of those assets were total garbage and the deal was a disaster.

JV between 2 investors where one is the financial partner and the other is providing sweat equity.. etc.

I liked that idea of financial assistance, as I don't have much free cash to invest.

First of all i want to thank the bigger pockets community for everything you guys do to help every day people reach financial freedom!

I feel that REI is the best way to attain financial freedom and I look forward to meeting people with a similar mindset.

It may be some time before you get there, though.My only advice is to avoid spreadsheets for anything but financial calculations...unless you are writing macros.

One consideration I've had (but have not yet begun to explore the feasibility of) would be owning a duplex and renting out the other half to begin my investing journey and stop paying rent into zero equity; but much more information would be needed to understand if this is possible in my financial state. 

Got my finances in order, met with my financial advisor, analysed the sh*t  out of the market.