Thoughts on waiving inspection contingency

[Harry M.]

The Dallas market is getting really hot, and we're having difficulty getting something under contract (SFHs, duplexes), though we have been close twice.
One pattern I'm starting to see emerge is folks waiving their inspection contingency to get a competitive advantage.
On the bank owned duplex we bid on it was required up front, and we did it with some misgivings after getting our contractor in there first. The last one, a SFH, we lost in a tiebreaker to someone who waived their inspection contingency.
I wanted to get your thoughts on this. Under what circumstances would you consider this? When not?
We are using financing so there is the financing contingency as a fallback if something big enough were discovered to cause our lender not to want to lend, or for the appraisal to come in too low.
Let me know what you guys think.
Thanks,
-Harry

[Steve Babiak]

Are you 100% sure you're losing deals just because of inspection contingency, when you still have a financing contingency (and probably appraisal contingency to go with that)?