In 2023 or 2024, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex purchased a luxury villa in Portugal. I have loved this story from the very beginning – even with the British media’s 24-7 tantrums, it was hard not to notice that the story was always win-win for Prince Harry and Meghan. If the British reporting was false, then that means… other British reporting on the Sussexes is false too, right? If the British reporting was true, that meant that the Sussexes have enough money to buy and maintain two multi-million-dollar luxury properties in Montecito AND Portugal, which means all of the hand-wringing about the Sussexes’ finances was and is an ugly smear. The Sussexes’ Portuguese vacation home had never been hard-confirmed before last month, when Meghan posted photos from Portugal on her Instagram. Now the grumpy and inconsolable British media has to write stories admitting that Harry and Meghan bought a second home for £6.3 million and the home is situated in a really beautiful coastal community full of celebrities and wealthy elites.
Costa Terra is a gold-plated yet fabulously understated golf and leisure resort in Comporta, 90 minutes south of the Portuguese capital, Lisbon, where Harry and Meghan are said to have paid £6.3 million for a holiday home in 2023. No prizes for guessing who sold them the property — [Jack] Brooksbank works in the marketing and sales department.
It’s a true home from home for the Sussex family because Costa Terra carries strikingly familiar Montecito vibes. Both are exclusive communities in beach-beauty coastal locations, one on the Atlantic and the other on the Pacific, and both have multimillion-dollar homes predominantly owned by North American residents. Current prices at Costa Terra start at €4.9 million (£4.2 million) just for a plot.
At Costa Terra’s organic farm Meghan can continue the green-fingered prowess that she displays on Instagram and take Lilibet to feed the chickens. Harry and Archie can cycle around the 722-acre resort or follow up their Californian surfing exploits with the opportunity to design their own boards before carrying them through the dunes to the beach.
“Activities are the glue that brings families together and everything is about the experience,” says Kevin Blary. He set up Costa Terra’s outdoor pursuits programme and experiences on offer include tennis, pickleball and padel at the racket centre, beachfront gallops on horses from the private equestrian centre or a helicopter journey up to Portugal’s surfing hotspot of Nazare to surf with the world-record holder Garrett McNamara. There are daily open-air yoga classes, an extensive gym with cold plunges and infrared saunas and a spa treatment list to satisfy even the most demanding Californian wellness addict. Serious golfers can focus on the Tom Fazio-designed golf course (the only fully private golf course in Portugal, they claim) while less serious ones can tuck into pizzas or an extensive range of sweets, drinks and savouries at the halfway houses.
Costa Terra is a resort without rules, a refreshing contrast to stuffy golf resorts: there’s no golfing dress code and the emphasis throughout is on family fun. It was the first European resort from Discovery Land Company (DLC), a US golfing community developer founded by Mike Meldman in 1994, now with 41 resorts worldwide. DLC’s success relies on an assured blend of handsome properties, superb facilities, the guarantee of privacy and a keen attention to detail.
It also relies on Meldman’s star-studded address book. He was one of the three initial investors in the tequila brand Casamigos with George Clooney and Rande Gerber (the husband of the 1990s supermodel Cindy Crawford). Both the Clooney and Crawford families are thought to have invested in DLC communities, along with Beyoncé, Michael Jordan and Reese Witherspoon, an exclusive community of celebrities and Hollywood stars where Meghan, with her acting background, should feel at home.
“Comporta is a destination where simplicity defines luxury, somewhere to disconnect rather than to flaunt and display,” says Alex Koch de Gooreynd, a partner at Knight Frank. “Relatively undiscovered until 2014, its effortless elegance and understated lifestyle has quietly attracted discerning families since. The area has seen the market explode, with prices rising 300 per cent in the past decade. Values now reach up to €1,800/€2,000 a square metre with turnkey, branded hotel properties reaching over €20,000 a square metre.”
Costa Terra is a laid-back resort of 300 homes in one of Portugal’s most laid-back, natural regions. It bills itself as “simple luxury” and promotes a breezy, barefoot lifestyle, but make no mistake — with Michelin-starred chefs on hand to serve up private dinners, owners flying in by private jet and €176 million spent on completed amenities, this is aimed at the one per cent who demand (and are accustomed to getting) the very best.
You know it hurt the Times to publish this. They didn’t even include one snide or backhanded comment, nothing about “they bought this home with money earned from Harry SELLING OUT HIS FAMILY!” They’re too upset that their years-long campaign to destroy the Sussexes has not worked whatsoever. Harry and Meghan live in a gorgeous Montecito mansion and they have a cute vacation villa in Portugal, and that’s easily $30 million-plus worth of real estate in their portfolio. And those are just the homes we know about! The Sussexes could own additional homes!! LMAO.
Incidentally, I’m officially calling it – Meghan’s recent photos of that mystery pool are all from Portugal. That’s my theory.
Photos courtesy of Meghan’s Instagram.
I want to be the reporter that the Times sent there to write this “news article.”
Also, “laid back” is doing a lot of work in this piece. Must be the sun, or the wine?
Cancelling the lease on their cottage at Windsor isn’t looking so smart now, is it?
LOL! The BRF were never very good at planning for the future, were they? Living in the past and never learning from their idiotic mistakes is their trademark!
They’ve never really had to plan for the future because they’ve always known their roles. They’ve always known who gets what, when, how much, where they’ll live, how they’ll pay the bills (they don’t have to, others do it for them), where they’ll go to school, etc.
I think that the photo of Harry tossing Lily was taken at the Althorp pool with the child with her back to the camera being Harry’s young cousin, Lady Charlotte Diana Spencer who is just 13. I think the photos of Meghan with the balloons are at the Portugal pool or another property. I do think that they own property in Montana or Wyoming too.
I think the child-flipping photo is not Montecito because the grass is almost up to the edge. In the Mia & Meghan photo you can see the concrete surround. From my limited experience, American pools are generally surrounded by concrete aprons while in England, at least, they’ll have grass almost up to the edge.
I checked out some of the photos of Diana as a teenager taken by the late Earl Spencer in Andrew Morton’s book. Definitely looks like Althorp’s pool. (Check the shot of Diana on the tennis court.)
@twoz: I think you’re right! For some reason I didn’t realize Althorp even had a pool; I knew Sandringham did, and they lived there for a bit.
Oh it just galls the derangers. According to them, Black folks shouldn’t have anything, much less two gorgeous mansions. Harry should be punished for loving a biracial woman and Meghan should be grasping and begging for scraps. You know the royalists, rota, and derangers are sick with furious envy that the Sussexes are fabulously wealthy and hopelessly in love. It prolly keeps them all up at night!
I love love love that the rumours were true that Harry and Meghan bought a holiday home. You don’t do that if you’re poor and taking out multiple mortgages.
Also, it’s clear that the photo of Meghan with Mia and Harry throwing Lili are from Montecito. That’s their exact landscape and pool surround.
The one with Meghan jumping in is very clearly a different location so I believe that one was in Portugal and them and the brooksbanks celebrated together as an early birthday party for Meghan.
I remember reading long long ago ( 2020) that they had bought a run down country estate in the UK. They were just begining to fix it up when they had to flee the country.
I think what made the RF angriest at Meghan was that she was already a millionaire. She had leased their house in the Cotswolds not the RF. She bought the fixures for Frogmore. Harry was only getting about 80k a year and they barely raised it when he married. She paid for her own clothes. I remember that was one of Fergie’s (and her daughters) pet peeves was that she did not have the funds to dress like a princess. Meghan didn’t miss a beat and that was without taking freebies like someone else. Meghan’s new hat budget was probably more than what Fergie had for her entire wardrobe.
If there is a reconciliation, I truly hope that Harry refuses any and all sovereign assets. William would take them back the second Charles closed his eyes forever. Charles should set up Harry as he should have from the beginning. Give him an estate like the Queen gave Anne and Andrew outside of royal properties in their own name. Also, give him his inheritance upfront.
This is all because Charles was not a man of his word. He refused to abide by the conditions his mother laid out. He refused to give his brother the Duchy of Edinburgh and when he finally conceeded however, it was not hereditary. He also took away properties from the Queens most loyal subject and even his own son. So there is no trust that William would abide by Charles’ last wishes. (BTW everyone got suddenly quiet about Royal Lodge. Has Camilla moved in yet?)
You can never tell when the UK press is lying but this estate looked legit. If they were lying they would have showed a lux villa. Can not find the 2020 article any more. But it would make sense. Frogmore was a stepping stone for the Sussexes however, the press painted Frogmore as the ultimate that Meghan could attain… renovated staff accommodations. I think she was already working on their forever home.
20/20 Hindsight I think this is the same reason they harrassed Chelsey out of Harry’s life, because her family had money. She didn’t have to beg for their leftover scraps. She could go toe to toe with Buttons and more importantly she was thought of in her own right not an appendage to her man.
Interestingly they “approved” of Cressida. She was from a “good family” but didn’t have a pot to piss in. Her major complaint about Harry was that he made her pay for her own flights (he didn’t have the money) ect.
i beleive Harry is a product of both his mother and father, his actions showed he learned from both setting up charities and buying homes is what his father did ,which is interesting that W never saw fit to do similar instead just leaches off the public purse. ihope Harry and Meghan have a huge property portfolio., all thanks to a broken printer
But Charles is not buying homes, not with own money. Highgrove belongs to the Duchy of Cornwall, the castle of mey and Birkhall he inherited from Queen Mum, Sandringham from the queen, Clarence House from Queen Mum to, and some other houses he purchased with charity money.
What about the place in Transylvania? How’d he manage to use somebody else’s money for that? Not doubting the possibility, I’m just curious what line of reasoning he’d have used.
Charles had an large annual income from the Duchy of Cornwall because he was the Prince of Wales – for many years it was between £20 to £25 million a year.
Now that Charles is King, his annual income is about the same amount, £25 million from the Duchy of Lancaster.
Charles would’ve bought his home in Transylvania with his Duchy of Cornwall income.
Surely those with 5+ homes can’t say much about a second home?
I do not mean to be disrespectful to Jason Arday and the tragedy that befell him from the racist british media however his tragedy only cements the experiences and mental health struggles of Meghan and Harry. They were so smart to recognize what was happening and escape. I only wish the same could be said for Jason Arday.
100% Caty. That poor dude. Terrorized to death by the British media and their ilk. TG H&M got the hell out of Dodge
Jason Aday had a British working class upbringing – he didn’t have ample funds or experience of living overseas – the Sussexes had both.
I wondered about Jason’s options re escaping from the UK – he could’ve found work in Canada or Australasia, but that would have taken time.
After he resigned, I’d have gotten the hell out of dodge. Get out of the country and wait for the story to die down. But it’s easy for me to say, I was not in his shoes.
This piece is a promo ad, paid for by the resort owners. The snide aimed at H&M is because, you know, the British press can’t help themselves. The journalist went to dig info about H&M, and came to this agreement with the owner(s).
…or, an agreement with Jack Brookbanks, to drum up sales.
This is why they need to keep their public distance from the Yorks.
I agree, it reads like a product placement ad. Whether they actually talked with the developers or just researched old articles is the question. But it sounds like its a pretty secure place and you can’t get in without a specific invite. The rich folks there would probably stipulate no talking to the press about specifics so this article is probably based on ones written previously.
Hahahahaha let them stay mad.
Enjoy your villa!!!!!!
There were no snide remarks about Harry and Meghan because the piece was probably paid for by the real estate company that owns the resort. As we’ve seen with recent events, the Times does sponsored articles. They still haven’t been able to confirm if Harry and Meghan owns a house in Portugal. But the British press can’t have it both ways. They can’t be saying that Harry and Meghan are broke and then in the same breathe saying that they own a $6.3 million villa in Portugal.
Sure they can, Amy Bee! They contradict themselves all the time, sometimes in the same article, sometimes in the same paragraph. The British press has it all the ways, up and down, back and forth, to and fro, above and below. As an added bonus, they get beyond as well. They post beyond all reason, beyond all facts, beyond all that is reasonable.
The British press does whatever the pluck they like, with no guardrails, no accountability, and no sense. Just thinking about their rampant abuses raises my blood pressure.
‘They contradict themselves all the time, sometimes in the same article, sometimes in the same paragraph. The British press has it all the ways, up and down, back and forth, to and fro, above and below. As an added bonus, they get beyond as well. They post beyond all reason, beyond all facts, beyond all that is reasonable.’
They truly do! It is sometimes a thing of beauty their contradictory contortions! 👏
If the Times is being paid to feature the resort, I don’t think the real estate company would want a glowing piece.
Why aren’t they detailing the many homes of the left-behinds??
Living well is the best revenge 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂
Regarding the photo dump. Part of the pics are in Portugal. The last one w/ the sign is definitely in Portuguese.
I’m thinking that Harry and Meghan have a property manager to rent this place out for them.
It seems like a smart investment for them. They can generate income to help cover the cost of the place since it is a vacation home and they aren’t always there. Meghan has always been smart about money….
Then I think the English must do battle with Portugal, to own the country that is a second home to the Sussexes. Once they conquer Portugal, King Charles can take Harry’s Portuguese home from him, as he did Harry’s English home. It could be King Charles’ Falkland Islands moment or Trump’s Venezuela or Iran moment. What could go wrong?
They called the very VIRTUOUS woman,Meg,a gold digger ,
The true gold digger is Kate Middleton, she and William would never be successful like H& M if they had left, no brains no initiatives no legacies of their own, MEGA LAZIES ,sorry for their children! No good role model for them.