Going crazy...

I am having another crazy week. We have been house hunting for a few weeks now and it seems like everything is still too expensive for our budget and each place we see seems to look worse and worse. I really thought this process would be a bit easier since the country is in a deep recession or depression...however you want to see it. There is just not a lot of homes for sale in the areas we want to buy in. I hope that is good for the families living in these areas, which hopefully means there are not terrible lay-offs, although my mom and stepdad are both laid off right now. So, I know that NC is suffering from layoffs and we kinda wanted to take advantage of the forclosures and find a home but some of the homes are more work than we want to do. We are really at our wits end right now and are actually considering moving to the coast if we have to find a home outside our neighboring cities. We really want to qualify for the USDA loan to help us but it limits our areas and we have to stay northeast of Raleigh. It's tough and we are considering taking a break. Oh, did I mention that everytime we see a house we REALLY want to see, that our agent (whom we think is not on our side) tells us it's already got a contract or is sold. We are getting tired of this game and we have to keep her as our agent until April 10th and then we are going to find someone who will help us. We are actually doing the searches online ourselves and we then have to give the MLS# to the agent so we can see the houses b/c she is just not searching for us. I hate that she is not helping us but if we don't come across something tomorrow, I think my DH and I are done searching for a week. How long does house hunting usually take? Did any of you have this kind of trouble? Do you have any tips?