The Masthead

The people behind
Holiday Home Times

Seven editors and journalists covering property, residency, lifestyle,
and the art of building a life somewhere new.

Editor-in-Chief

Editorial

Julian Ashworth

British · Lisbon, Portugal

Julian read English at Oxford and spent two decades as a foreign correspondent for The Times and the Financial Times, reporting from more than sixty countries. He joined Holiday Home Times in 2024 as Editor-in-Chief, taking over from Dhruv, and brought with him a long-held conviction that intelligent, independently-funded publishing still has a meaningful place in a market increasingly dominated by affiliate content.

He oversees all editorial commissioning, writes the monthly Editor's Note, and is the person the rest of the team must answer to when a comma ends up where a semicolon belongs. He considers this the most important part of the job.

Away from the desk, he collects 20th-century Portuguese azulejo tiles, reads poetry in two languages, and has been working on a book about the maritime history of the Tagus estuary since 2019 — a project he describes as nearly finished.

julian@holidayhometimes.com

The Journalists

Planning & Construction

Sophie Brennan

Irish · Barcelona, Spain

Sophie studied architecture at University College Dublin before moving into property journalism at The Irish Times, where she covered Barcelona's urban regeneration beat. Now permanently based in the city, she brings a trained eye to planning permissions, construction timelines, and building standards across jurisdictions — and an enthusiasm for the subject that makes even planning law surprisingly readable. She is quietly obsessed with old city maps.

sophie@holidayhometimes.com
Lifestyle & Living

Valentina Cruz

Mexican · Porto, Portugal

Born in Guadalajara and trained in fashion journalism in Mexico City, Valentina spent formative years in Milan and São Paulo before relocating to Porto via Portugal's Non-Habitual Resident tax regime. She writes about the intangible things that make a second home feel like a real one — local markets, school culture, neighbourhood rhythms, and the slow art of belonging somewhere new. She maintains that the quality of the nearest bakery is a more reliable indicator of a location than any property report.

valentina@holidayhometimes.com
Rental & Marketing

Marcus Reid

Australian · Mallorca, Spain

Marcus holds a marketing degree from the University of Melbourne and spent his mid-twenties building and then selling a short-term rental management company in Sydney. He relocated to Mallorca after the sale and pivoted to writing, bringing a directness that comes from having personally managed close to three hundred properties. He covers yield analysis, platform strategy, pricing, and the honest economics of holiday home ownership — the kind of numbers the brochures rarely include. He surfs most weekends.

marcus@holidayhometimes.com
Investment & Buying

Nadia Patel

British · London, United Kingdom

After a decade in Goldman Sachs's structured finance team following her LSE Economics degree, Nadia left to write about alternative assets and private wealth strategies. At HHT, she covers the investment case for cross-border property, purchase structures, legal due diligence, and valuation methodology. Her work is routinely cited by family office advisors and independent wealth managers. She will not publish a number she has not personally verified — a habit that has occasionally delayed a filing but has never resulted in a correction.

nadia@holidayhometimes.com
Immigration & Visas

Priya Nair-Santos

Indian · Cascais, Portugal

A law graduate of NALSAR University of Law, Hyderabad, Priya practised corporate immigration law in Mumbai before taking a career break to accompany her husband Ramon Santos — a Filipino pharmaceutical executive — on postings across Singapore, Dubai, and London. Navigating each country's immigration system from the inside, and from the applicant's side of the desk, reshaped her thinking entirely. She transitioned to journalism and relocated to Cascais in 2021 via Portugal's D7 passive income visa, having worked through the SEF backlog without shortcuts. HHT's most-cited writer, she is especially widely read in Southeast Asian and Gulf expat communities.

priya@holidayhometimes.com
Destinations

Cleo Hartmann

German-British · Nomadic

Half-German, half-British, Cleo grew up between Munich and London before studying journalism at City, University of London. She has spent the past five years travelling across more than forty countries with a 65-litre backpack, and her Destinations column is consistently HHT's most-read section. She writes about places as they actually are, not as the tourism board would prefer — which is precisely why readers trust her. She is currently somewhere with decent Wi-Fi.

cleo@holidayhometimes.com

Publisher

Publisher

Roshan L. D'Silva

Roshan is the founder and publisher of Holiday Home Times. He was raised in Qatar, went to university in Mumbai, India, and has lived and worked in Singapore, Bangalore, Dubai, the United States and Canada. He is an avid student of art, history and micro communities and handles all commercial responsibilities at Holiday Home Times.

roshan@holidayhometimes.com

Our journalists are not available for direct appointments. For editorial enquiries contact research@holidayhometimes.com and for advertising and partnership opportunities contact advertising@holidayhometimes.com. Our editorial independence policy is set out in full in our Trust Center.