Among his peers, it won’t take a lot of extra explaining to get three-plus decade veteran, divisional start-up pro, and serial entrepreneur Drew Holzwarth when he refers to homebuilding’s calling as a “bug” he can’t rid himself of just yet.

Case in point: After agreeing to merge a firm he’d started in 2009 – Charlottesville, VA-based Piedmont Realty & Construction – with Reston, VA-based Stanley Martin Homes in 2013, and leading the blended companies’ turbocharged growth and expansion into Richmond and Raleigh, N.C., for five-and-a-half years, Holzwarth thought in 2019 it might be exactly the note to go out on, and call it a career.

He’d accomplished at least a career worth of professional and business goals, made money, and was looking at a comfortable retirement with time – at his relatively young age — on his side to enjoy just as he wanted to.

The “bug” decided otherwise.

I was off on the sidelines for only about seven months, and I will tell you, it was nice, but you can only play so much tennis you can only play so much golf,” Holzwarth says. “If you’re wired like I am to get up and go, it just it wasn’t that much fun. So, although Greenwood Homes certainly wasn’t the plan, I’m glad we did. It’s fun.”

Image courtesy of Greenwood Homes: (from left) Chris Sylves, Mike Dockman, Drew Holzwarth (managing partner), Hunter Taylor, George Weller, Scott Carlson.

One of the things I consider most important is on the construction and production side of the business, all of our leaders in that area are builders,” Holzwarth says. “They’ve been builders for a long time and they love building a tight quality product. And the partners are not focused only on ‘can I save a day or two or days under construction?’ Now, that means a lot right now as we grow. But, their focus is more on, ‘we will never deliver a home until it’s ready.’ Our production leaders tell us when it’s ready. They’re the tip of the spear in the company. We’re all excited about selling a home. Nothing happens until we sell a home. But once that home goes into production, we schedule our deliveries when our production team tells us the homes are ready, and that’s been a dramatic nuance with our customers. And so what happens is our salespeople have confidence in that production team. And that production team has confidence that the partners are going to support them and we’re going to deliver our home when it’s ready, and it’s going to be tight. It’s going to be a 100% home. And so we’ve been able to attract people that want to build great homes that want to sell great homes. And that’s really helped us build upon the culture of getting things done at the company. And as a result, we’re having more fun, you know, we want to laugh together. We want to win together. But the reality is, we want to build great homes.”

That’s the “bug” talking.