About Malas a Montes
Houses with soul, where time slows down.
Malas a Montes started long before it had a name. The houses in Alvalade have been in my family since 1951 — three generations of the same doorframes, the same garden, the same quiet street. Saldanha is family too, part of the same inheritance of Lisbon addresses I grew up moving between. And Colares has been ours for three generations, a family beach retreat where the Sintra hills meet the sea, long before "short-term rental" meant anything to anyone.The rest of the portfolio tells a different, more personal story. I spent over two decades building an international career across ten countries and three continents — enough time away to know exactly what I was homesick for. Mapa in Belém, Avença da Praia in Parede, and the three cottages in the Alentejo are the houses I chose deliberately, one by one, as an investment in my own return: each a piece of the Portugal I planned to come home to, built and furnished with retirement in mind long before I actually arrived. What I've built since 2019 is really both halves of the same instinct — the family houses I never left, and the ones I bought back my way toward.Today that's nine houses across three parts of Portugal I know intimately: the city neighbourhoods of Lisbon, the coast west of it, and a quiet corner of the Alentejo near the Costa Vicentina. Each one, family or investment, was chosen the same way — a place I'd actually want to stay, in a neighbourhood I'd actually want to come home to.
Independente e genuína
That's the whole philosophy, in two words. Every house checks in independently, at any hour, without a key exchange or a stranger meeting you at the door. I built it that way on purpose. It's not a workaround for not having staff on the ground — it's the point. The best hospitality, I think, is the kind you don't notice: everything working, nothing needing explanation, and enough distance to feel like the house is genuinely yours for the time you're in it.
That same principle shapes who these houses are for. They suit people who travel independently — who don't need a welcome committee, who'd rather have a smart lock than a schedule to coordinate around. If that's not your travel style, that's alright; it just means we're probably not the right fit, and I'd rather you know that before you book than after.
Nine houses, three places
In Lisbon, four houses sit across Belém, Alvalade, and Saldanha. Laurentina and Clementina in Alvalade, and Jacaranda in Saldanha, are family houses — decades of the same addresses before they ever took a guest. Mapa in Belém is different: the first piece of my own return to Portugal, chosen for its proximity to the river and the monastery.
On the coast, two houses sit in Parede and Colares. Colares is family, three generations deep into the same stretch of Atlantic. Avença da Praia in Parede is mine by choice — a small, deliberate investment in the kind of easy, train-connected beach life I wanted waiting for me.
In the Alentejo, three cottages share a private saltwater pool and garden in São Bartolomeu da Serra, near the Rota Vicentina walking trails and within reach of both Comporta's quiet glamour and the surf beaches further south. These, too, are mine by choice — the clearest expression of what twenty years abroad taught me to want: space, quiet, and a place with nothing left to prove.