Hi Sally and Martin
The world of off plan buying is not for the faint hearted but I have found sites like this both interesting and informative. I have purchased direct from San Jose and therefore have no agent on which I can rely for information (although reading lots of comments on this site and others maybe this is not such a disadvantage!). I too have paid my deposit which I did so in February 2005.
Despite all the problems and issues since I remain hopeful that I will one day own a beautiful property in the sunshine. We are lucky in many respects as we are buying as a holiday home for family use so the delays are merely an inconvenience from a holiday viewpoint. Having said that I am paying a mortgage on lending that has yet to be utilised! My patience has also been helped by the fact that my research indicated that buying this way was likely to result in lots of frustration and delay - the compensation is that we were able to afford a much better and bigger property than we would otherwise have achieved.
At the moment we are hanging in there... we are still excited and cannot even contemplate that the dream will turn in to a nightmare.
Dont know if any of that helps but hopefully it will!
Cheers Mike...