- COVELAND (Real Estate Coy.) MD, TOLULOPE IGE
Coveland is a new real estate company, located at 18, Carter Street, Herbert Macaulay Way, Ebute Metta, Lagos. This company is headed by an energetic and versatile lady, Tolulope Ige. She is the Managing Director of this promising real estate company. Coveland is into many things under real estate, some of it includes: Estate Project, Acquisition, Project Development, Real Estate Marketing, and Consultancy, Documentation, Land Banking and many others.
Coveland will become one of Nigeria’s biggest real estate company in few years time, according to the MD of the company. She also said, the company will make more use of modern technology to run the business in order to attract many subscribers.
Two weeks ago, Tolulope Ige was at the 4th City People Real Estate Awards and City People duo, ISAAC ABIMBADE and JOHN IGBOKWE, spoke to her and she spoke extensively about the vision of Coveland. Enjoy.
We want you to tell us more about your new real estate company, Cleveland?
Coveland is a new real estate company that has been redefined. We are set out to do so many things in the real estate sector. Right now, you have a lot of real estate companies but we are bringing more to the development of the sector. We want to bring more innovation to the real estate sector. That is what Coveland is all about.
Can you be a bit explicit about being innovative?
What I mean by innovation is, we have many real estate companies and what they want to do is to sell their property to potential customers or existing ones but we are looking up to meeting up with new people and convert them. We want everybody to understand the business of real estate. We want to build a force that through real estate people can make a good living.
How do you want your product to be more affordable for average income earners?
As a matter of fact, we have a lot of packages but we have to accommodate as many people as possible. To be specific, we have products as low as 5 thousand naira. We have developed a model that you don’t even have to come down to our office to make payment every month. We are approaching a lot of people, associations, a lot of corporate bodies as well. We are also looking at the other low end estates that will not be too expensive for people to key into. We know so many people want to live/invest in Ibeju Lekki axis and you could see from the trend that Ibeju Lekki properties is really appreciating.
So, we are also looking inward and searching for how we can accommodate a lot of people and the price will not be too much, between 5 hundred and 7 hundred thousand naira. We also have a medium size plot, where people can actually key into.
How do you address those who default in payment; a situation where someone, for instance, lost his job and couldn’t pay up, how do you deal with such a situation?
Basically, we have issues like this but we put it into ‘plain’. If you are a subscriber or client who has moved into our estate and you are having challenges with your job or finances, we advise that you write us, give us timely notice of the reason why you won’t meet up with your payment. In an event where your can’t perform you monthly premium, maybe 3 months consecutively, what we do is to call you to a meeting and find out if you will continue. We ask you if you can bring another client who can buy from you and get your money and probably some interest on it. That is how we do it. But if we feel you still have interest in the property and you still want to pay, the only thing is that you will pay more interest on it because we also want to make profit. We can’t have our land tied down for a long period without profit.
We would be at a lost if we allow this.
Now that your company has taken off, what are your plans and goals for the next few years?
We are looking at making a global name. You will agree with me that real estate is a large business. We are looking at development. We want to do projects that can support government. We are looking at partnering with the existing bodies. We are also going to be partnering with as many organizations as possible.
