Before our interview, Galway plasterer-turned-property magnate Luke Comer wants to show myself and The Currency’s photographer the stunning views down to the sea from a hill behind the Sugarloaf in north Wicklow, where he owns 260 acres of land. 

The 62-year-old horse racing enthusiast and horse breeder keeps about 60 horses here, roaming in lush green fields that contrast vividly against the blue skies and the Irish sea beyond on a sunny September afternoon. There are over 500 more horses elsewhere, including at stud farms in Co Meath, Kilternan in south Dublin, and Co Kildare.  

Among his stable is a son of Frankel – the legendary British thoroughbred who was unbeaten in his 14-race career – making the stallion a grandson of Coolmore Stud’s legendary Irish thoroughbred Galileo. 

With the photos taken – for which he’s wearing a dapper navy suit and brimmed hat – he drives us carefully back down the hill in his Mercedes SUV. One part of the steep slope we descend, Comer having expertly manoeuvred us up it earlier, working its engine hard, is at an angle of perhaps 45 degrees, which had the photographer scrambling to put on his seatbelt. 

We have about an hour left to chat before he heads to Dublin to collect his wife, with whom he will later attend The Champions’ Dinner for the racing fraternity in Dublin’s Shelbourne Hotel. 

Being among the very few Irish developers who came through the 2008 crash solvent, the Comers were ideally placed to benefit and make a fortune from the fallout. 

During the following hour, he reveals that The Comer Group property empire he founded with his UK-based brother Brian, 59 (who runs the business there) is now worth close to €5 billion excluding debt, while its debt level is less than 20 per cent of that.  

Spanning the UK, Ireland, Germany, and now Greece, it includes development land, shopping centres, office blocks and skyscrapers, and more than 10,000 apartments. Its annual rent roll is close to €100 million, he adds.  

Being among the very few Irish developers who came through the 2008 crash solvent, the Comers were ideally placed to benefit and make a fortune from the fallout. 

They hoovered up various properties – mainly land, office and apartment blocks. They had honed their nous for timing and when to invest over decades in Britain in particular, but also in Germany, having weathered the cycles of those property markets. 

After it invested about €1 billion in Irish property at the bottom of the market, Comer confirms that, as industry sources suggested last year, his firm’s assets here are now worth at least double that. He and Brian intend to hold on to the majority of them, he adds.  

Last year, it emerged that the Comers made a €76 million profit alone after selling an office block that is leased to Facebook on Dublin’s East Wall Road. It’s one of many reasons why the value of their portfolio has perhaps increased by as much as €2 billion in the past four years.  

Comer’s current focus is partly on Greece, where he plans to invest €500 million. It emerges only days after our interview that US private equity behemoth Blackstone, whose property empire is $273 billion, has similar aims. 

But Comer has got in there first it seems, in the case of one trophy property at least, snapping up The Club Hotel and Casino in the seaside resort of Loutraki, which is about an hour’s drive from Athens. It seems that in order to make money the Comer way, it helps to have a head start on the likes of Blackstone. 

“I was ready to, but I was probably a bit too greedy, as I thought it might go to parity. I’d said to myself I should convert at least €100 million.”

Luke Comer

He also talks about his ambitions for the 220-acre Metro Park site, on the proposed metro route near Dublin Airport, revealing that world-renowned London-based architects Foster & Partners – which designed Apple’s HQ in California, Berlin’s renovated Reichstag, and The Gherkin and Bloomberg’s European HQ in London – have drawn up a stunning masterplan for a €2 billion development there. 

We will also discuss Comer’s penchant for betting on the oil price and the currency markets. When we last met, in North London in 2015, he revealed how he had already been gambling on them. After he lost €30 million in one night on a currency bet, he decided to give it up for a while. By September 2019 however, he’s been lured back to the market again, it seems.

On the Monday after the Iranian drone attacks on Saudi Arabian oil installations, the oil price is up by $8 at one stage. By my reckoning, he should have made a profit of between €10 million and €12 million. On a brief call later that day, he reveals that based on the trades he’s made, he’s up by €5 million or €6 million.

On August 10, he was tempted to convert some of his cash – “hundreds of millions of euros” into Sterling, he reveals, as the rate peaked at £0.939 to €1. “I was ready to, but I was probably a bit too greedy, as I thought it might go to parity. I’d said to myself I should convert at least €100 million. I was about to, but then I said no. So I didn’t. But hindsight is a great thing.” 

Our conversation will also cover Brexit, religion – briefly, the housing crisis in Ireland, and other matters besides. 

The sport of kings

Returning first to horses, earlier this year, Comer spoke about his ambition to create a €100 million all-weather track, similar to Belmont in New York, and develop a hotel on a piece of land in Palmerstown, the house and golf resort formerly owned by Jim Mansfield. 

However, he’s since decided not to proceed with the plans. “It would be ambitious. But I’m not sure we’re going to go ahead with it now. In perhaps Tipperary or Naas, they could put in an all-weather track beside the existing one. They could probably do that for €10 million or €12 million. 

“I wouldn’t be doing something in a Mickey Mouse way. I wouldn’t do it unless I did it in a really top notch way.”

Luke Comer

“To do a new Palmerstown, you’re looking at investing €100 million. To get a return that would be more difficult. I wouldn’t be doing something in a Mickey Mouse way. I wouldn’t do it unless I did it in a really top notch way. But it could take a lot of business from the Curragh and Naas. They are both trying to keep their heads above water. Palmerstown would have been a fantastic location for it. But I think the best thing is probably not to do it.” 

On the track, Comer’s fortunes have been modest. Since 1997, his horses have made him over €300,000, according to figures on the website irishracing.com, notching up only 14 wins. 

His horses mainly run on the flat. “We would have a few national hunt horses, but mostly we’d be wanting to win big races on the flat.” 

There’s a sense he’d like to devote more time to breeding and racing: “If I can get time to concentrate on it. I haven’t had that much time lately, but we will have plenty of success,” he says. 

There is no shortage of space for the steeds. Between the various stud farms, Comer owns about 8,000 acres here in Ireland. 

The Comer Group has been a sponsor of the St Leger race at the Curragh for five years now, putting up a record €600,000 prize for it, and another €250,000 for two other races. Unfortunately, Comer’s horse that he’d hoped would compete in the St Leger injured its leg and could not run. 

The firm also supports the sport through the provision of end-of-career insurance for all members of the Irish Jockeys Association.  

Aside from this support for horse racing, readers in Galway may also be familiar with the Comers’ backing of Galway United FC, and its aims to build an academy for the club near Athenry, which could see an investment of €20 million there. 

New fortunes in Greece

When it comes to business, Comer spends his time travelling between Monaco – where he lives – and Athens, Germany, London and Ireland. He’s impressed with the new centre-right New Democracy government in Greece and its pro-business attitude, and he explains his plans for investing in the country.  

“We’re looking mostly at hotels in Greece, maybe some residential blocks as well. Many hotels there have had hundreds of millions spent on them. Loutraki cost €250 million to build,” he says. 

Comer successfully bid for the debt underpinning the hotel, which also contains a casino very popular with gamblers from across Europe and Russia. Significant haircuts on the loans saw him pay no more than €30 million for the property. 

“In 2008, when the rest of the world was in recession, the business turned over €274 million. It costs €55 million to run it. When we bought it, it was turning over €40 million, so was losing €15 million a year. It was a brave enough purchase. But the turnover is already back to between €60 million and €70 million.” 

“The buyers we sold to paid a fortune…an absolute fortune. More than 1,000 times what we paid in some cases.”

Luke Comer

The potential for a global recession and its impact in the Comer Group’s markets looms large. But a steady revenue stream from rental income – which is approaching €100 million a year across commercial and residential property – provides a substantial financial cushion. 

He concedes that a number of shopping centres in Germany owned by the firm are vulnerable if, or when, retail anchor tenants see their businesses challenged by online shopping. “We saw in Germany that we’d lose anchor tenants, and then the properties would lose value.” 

In the three years to 2009, the firm spent €500 million on German property, but more recently has notched up €1 billion in sales – “but we still have a big business there.” It includes several skyscrapers in Frankfurt. 

The sale of one 10-hectare plot of development land alone, Behrens Ufer in south-east Berlin, the site of an old Samsung electronics factory with about a kilometre of frontage along the River Spree, made €300 million. 

“We had plans to, but we actually didn’t develop anything. We only rebuilt some of our shopping centres in Germany. We ended up not doing much development at all. We just invested in land. At one stage, we must have had about five kilometres of frontage along that river. 

“The buyers we sold to paid a fortune…an absolute fortune. More than 1,000 times what we paid in some cases. 

“My plan for the site was based on Berlin retaking its place as the capital of Europe after Brexit, and that perhaps it needed its own sort of IFSC, financial services centre development, a little Manhattan there. I wanted to build to 30 or 40 storeys. But the city authorities only wanted to see six storeys there, and it would’ve been a development I would’ve never wanted to do.  

“At one stage, I wanted to build something there no matter what. But then I wanted to build something really special. Then somebody wanted to pay me a fortune for the site, and I said to myself: ‘Why not just sell then?’ So I did. 

“With Germany, and Ireland, it was all down to timing. I would’ve seen what happens before, [with recessions and the market cycle.] As I’ve said before, it’s the exact same ingredient that will make you and break you, and that’s bottle. And after that it’s timing. It’s just the timing [of when] you apply the bottle. Or not, as the case may be.” 

Construction costs inflating

In Ireland, the Comer Group mainly employs its own teams of contractors to work on its developments. But construction cost inflation is impeding development, he says.  

“In Portumna, we should have built a hotel, but all our own teams are busy building apartments on other sites. We invited quotes from outside contractors, but the prices that came back have been double what the building is worth. That’s a particular problem outside of Dublin.” 

He finds the situation with the National Children’s Hospital, whose cost has risen from €640 million to €1.7 billion and perhaps beyond, incredulous. “They’re not building it out of gold.” 

He suggests that it should not cost more than €250 per square foot. However, at the current estimate, the cost comes to €603 per square foot. “I stand to be corrected, but any more than €250, it’s completely wrong,” he exclaims. 

“Construction is getting very difficult in Ireland. There aren’t enough tradesmen – the real creators.” He shares the view of many senior players in the industry, that the residential market peaked in 2016 or 2017. The firm has bought seven blocks of land here in the past few years, but nothing more, he adds. 

The firm recently achieved a record rent for a floor of its Number One Ballsbridge office development that’s rented to Coca-Cola at €101 per square foot. In Europe, industry figures suggest that you may only find higher office rents in London’s West End.  

Perhaps its most valuable current property here, for the moment at least, the Ballsbridge development sits on a two-acre site for which fellow Glenamaddy, Co Galway natives Ray and Danny Grehan paid €171.5 million. The Comers snapped it up for a mere €22.5 million. 

“We’ve spent the best part of €1 billion here. We’re not going to be selling too much stuff here, unless somebody offered us crazy money for something, then obviously we’d sell.”

Luke Comer

Looking at the commercial property market at the moment, the sale in August of Green Reit – a portfolio which consisted mainly of offices in Dublin city centre alongside some warehouses near Dublin airport – for €1.34 billion was an indicator that this is peaking as well, Comer says. 

“We’ve held on to nearly everything we’ve built here. We’ve spent the best part of €1 billion here. We’re not going to be selling too much stuff here, unless somebody offered us crazy money for something, then obviously we’d sell. We’re here for the long-term now. Ballsbridge was a massive investment. We sold the Facebook building, because we were a bit worried they might not stay more than 10 years,” Comer says. 

On the matter of the rental and housing crisis in Dublin, he is an advocate of affordable, but not social housing. “The authorities need to make sure the permissions are there to develop, and the market should then right itself with supply and demand. Building social housing would lead to a demand for several times more not long afterwards.” 

I make the point that Nama has provided a negligible social dividend. Perhaps, given that Nama was paying salaries to developers for many years to manage their own assets, they should also have used at least some of their time and expertise to give something back in the form of high quality social housing developments, I venture.  

But for whatever reason, the suggestion doesn’t strike a chord with him. He talks about the many fellow developers whose businesses “were devastated,” and that it’s good to see that some of them are back in business again.  

“We got burned a little bit in the past, but we’ve been lucky not to have been burned again. Once you’re burned, you tend not to go back into that same fire again,” he adds.  

When we spoke in 2015, his sentiments were that as a result of the crash, properties should have become more affordable. Banks should have been steadily lending again on them, and that a lot of people should have become at least a little bit better off through the housing market in that regard. 

“I used to get five grand a flat, plastering two flats a day. What kind of money would they get now, working 18 hours a day, seven days a week? I’d think about going back to it myself.”

Luke Comer

His answer to the aforementioned lack of tradesmen is a renewed effort to attract apprentices at an even younger age into construction – which, as many readers will know, is becoming more high-tech, like any other industry. Whether his views are realistic is open to question. 

“At the age of 12, you need to encourage prospective apprentices to go into a trade. Get their technical education. Do your learning in the first year, and then get out on site, at no older than 14. 16 is too old. I was earning 10 grand a week at one stage when I was 16, as a plasterer. With the shortage now, they’d make a fortune too, wouldn’t they?  

“I used to get five grand a flat, plastering two flats a day. What kind of money would they get now, working 18 hours a day, seven days a week? I’d think about going back to it myself,” he laughs. 

High-rise for Dublin

As with his ambitions in Berlin, Dublin’s planning authorities are holding back high-rise developments. What does Comer make of fellow developer Johnny Ronan’s campaign to get them to allow taller buildings? 

“I like Johnny. He’s very ambitious, and he always has been. It’s hard to keep a good man down. Dublin should have more high rise. 

“Cities… big cities, and progressive ones… it’s always the skyline of a city that makes it a city. Where would Manhattan be without high rise? It’d be a sprawl, going out for 10 or 20 miles of nothing but a sprawl. Without height, you cannot do much in terms of design. Look at Frankfurt, with its tall buildings – some of which look spectacular, and belong to us. It looks fantastic.” 

The Comer Group is among the bidders to develop the now infamous Glass Bottle site in the capital, he confirms, where Nama is reported to have set minimum bids at €125 million. Elsewhere, he also has ambitions for the 220-acre Metro Park site, on the proposed route of the Dublin Metro, near the airport. 

Its masterplan, which he shows me on his iPad, has been drawn up by Foster & Partners as mentioned. It features glass, steel and lots of green space and other greenery, in keeping with the latest eco-conscious design principles. 

“It’s about 15.5 million square feet, across four different sectors. It will be expensive, but fantastic. It might cost €2 billion to develop. Nearer the airport, the buildings will be lower rise, but then in the towers, you might have about 30 storeys.  

“It’s a really great site, although we’re being held up at the moment by the Metro. It could be one of the finest developments in Europe. We’d aim to invest our own resources in developing it,” he enthuses. 

On the other side of the Atlantic, he reveals that in the early 2000s, the firm looked at bidding for the huge Hudson Yards site in New York, which has since been developed at a cost of $25 billion. 

Prior to that, the Comers also looked at the Domino Sugar Factory development in Brooklyn, also since developed for $3 billion. “We don’t have anything in the US at all at the moment. But they would be within our capabilities. Then again, with sites like those, if you pay too much for them, you’re going to lose money – regardless of whether it’s your money or the bank’s. I would like to look at developing in New York again sometime, whenever there might be a downturn.” 

2,000 London apartments in 18 months

Across the Irish Sea meanwhile, build to rent has been the recent focus in the UK. “We haven’t sold an apartment there – or at least we’ve sold very few – in about two years. We decided that we weren’t going to build any more for sale. We must have built about 2,000 apartments there in the past 18 months.” 

He is hoping that about 1,000 acres of two 600-acre sites that the firm owns on the outskirts of London, in Enfield and Shenley, will be zoned for development in the near future. “It’s coming into the zoning now. It would probably be worth up to £10 million an acre if it was zoned. That’s probably the most valuable piece of land we have.” That’s potentially a cool £10 billion. 

On the subject of Brexit, his views are clear-cut. “I’m prepared for both scenarios – a deal, or no deal [a hard Brexit]. If I was just being mercenary, I’d love a hard Brexit. It’d create fantastic opportunities in London. I could nearly buy central London for nothing. But that’s just being mercenary.  

“Fair enough, our property values there will go down, but I’m not looking to sell them anyway, so I don’t care. We’re going to add to them, in time. As chairman of Comer Group International, it’s my job [to take that view.] 

“I don’t obviously wish no deal for people, for everybody else. But I’d have plenty of ways to try and milk a few bob out of any scenario. You can make money when things are crazy. But at the same time, it’s easier to lose a fortune than to make a fortune in such times as well.  

“These are the gambles you take”

We discuss his aforementioned bets on the oil market. “I used to push the buttons on the deals on my phone or iPad, but now I give a broker the orders to make the trades over the phone,” he explains. 

“Using a spread bet, I’d either have a position short or long, at €1.5 a dollar. For some time now, I’ve been going up and down with the same €10 million, twice a week. If I knew exactly when to come in and out again, I’d be making €10 million twice a week. But if I knew the result of the 4.30pm race this evening, I could win big too, couldn’t I?,” he laughs. 

“It’s difficult enough in a two-horse race, and that’s what the oil market is. If the price went down $30, you’d be down €45 million, and it’s not very nice. These are the gambles you take. The collateral I have to put up is €55 million.” 

In 2015, he and Brian described how they lost €30 million one night, betting on both the Dollar Index and the oil price. Although they had won €12 million some weeks before, they gave gambling a rest, telling themselves there’s no such thing as easy money. But the market has since lured Luke back, it seems.  

“We all turn to God in some way.” 

Luke Comer

In July last year, it emerged that Comer gave a donation to support the Pope’s visit here, saying: “We all turn to God in some way.” 

Asked to elaborate on his faith, he pauses, then hesitates momentarily, before reverting to a betting phrase. “I’d be each way on that. I’d like to think there’s something there. But sometimes it’s hard to believe, isn’t it?” 

****

When we last met in 2015 at the brothers’ HQ in North London, Comer reflected on their path to success: “We both still enjoy working. It’s a big help when you are working hard. You always enjoy success. We get a good buzz from what we do. I suppose we are good at managing people, but you make mistakes every day. 

“It’s always good to see a building that looks good rising up, creating something from nothing. There will be some fine developments that we’ve created around the world in the future, no matter what our future is. They’ll be around for the next couple of hundred years,” they agreed. 

Brian prefers Georgian and Victorian buildings, while Luke prefers the sleek, clean cut lines of modern designs in steel and glass. 

Having grown up in Glenamaddy and left school at a young age, the Comers initially worked for and clearly learned a lot from builders such as Ken Rohan and Sheelin Homes. Then, after they just broke even on a development in Kinsealy in north Dublin in the 1980s, they started out doing joint ventures in England, before branching out on their own.

Margaret Thatcher? “A fine woman”

They made their first big money – about £20 million – on Ealing Hospital in London, bought just before the market collapsed in 1988.

They recalled getting to know Margaret Thatcher – who was their local MP in Finchley in North London – to some extent, at constituency dinners there. “She was a fine woman…very tough on Ireland, but we got an insight into why she did some things the way she did,” Luke reflected.

“We did everything we could just to survive for four years, buying and selling land, trading hundreds of sites, a few at a time, which generated a lot of cash. We had a good few million borrowed at the time and UK interest rates were at 18 per cent.”

The brothers have a slightly old-school manner about them, but there’s every sense in both of them of a steely resolve and quick mind too. They both enjoy discussing sport, current affairs, and hearing about well-known fellow Irish entrepreneurs and their latest business exploits, easily employing irreverent wit, or sharing an anecdote. 

If they hadn’t gone into property development, they’d both still be plastering – which was how they started in construction – they said. If it was perhaps anyone else, you might struggle to believe it.  

If they lost all their fortune somehow and had to start again, Brian said he liked to think he could still go back to plastering, while Luke said he used to enjoy driving a JCB, listening to the radio, with his flask and sandwiches beside him, and that he’d be happy enough to go back to doing that.  

When we were taking photos up on the hill, Luke described how he’d previously driven a tractor up there, and had a few frights that it might roll over on the steep slope. He managed to keep the tractor upright, rather than ending up in a ditch somewhere down below, he laughed. 

As with navigating property market cycles and the business of development, knowing exactly when to apply “bottle” and weigh up the risks is evidently helpful.