While it took us a lot of effort on the front end to get a bank to play ball, now they've funded over $500k of deals and will underwrite more and more as we grow. 

It's a lot of time and effort involved but a lot of BP-ers are successful with it.   

I applaud your efforts for finding the 203K loan and think it's the right fit for you.  

In more seriousness, I would recommend the following (some of this might be overkill for an 8-unit building, but if this is your first multi-family, better safe than sorry):-  First, do all the stuff that won't require a lot of effort on the part of the seller (since you don't yet have a contract, they won't be motivated to spend a lot of time working with you at this point).  

NO..... it is not worth the effort

I'd also look at the longer term hold plays around the revitalization efforts of downtown and the Marina District.

In our experience about half of them get forwarded on and half we file away to show that we made a good faith effort.

So you can focus your efforts on one or two at a time.

It made me think about my own strengths and weaknesses and wonder how I can tailor my efforts to better match them. 

I genuinely had no idea there was a master HOA.