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THEY’RE GOOD GUYS,

REALLY! GREATER PITTSBURGH’S NEW HOME | Fall 201428

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Spec home in the Copper Creek development, Marshall Township.$2,095,000, 5 beds 7.5 bathrooms, over 7,875 finished square feet,first floor master bedroom, theatre room, on 3.6 acre cul-de-sac lot.

29www.greaterpittsburghnewhome.com

B u i l d e r P r o f i l e

WHY EDDY HOMES RULES IN CUSTOMER APPRECIATION.

What makes a home builder remarkable?

First, there are the remarks themselves. The customers of Eddy Homes, a family-owned company since 1971, speak the kind of praise that is usually reserved for good friends.

There are Tad and April Paterra, the very first residents of The Crossings, a carriage home community in McMurray. “For those guys, I’d do anything,” says Tad.

There’s Lu Ann Stewart, who has relocated seven times with her husband Sam. The Stewarts have had their share

of builders who stuck to a plan that didn’t deliver, but they can’t say enough about Eddy Homes.

“They were willing to do anything different to the floor plan that they could possibly do to keep us happy. It’s just amazing,” says Lu Ann. “We would definitely do it all over again.”

The accolades flow so freely from client to client that there’s no missing the pattern: this is a business that listens. New Home Magazine took a closer look at how Eddy Homes has won the trust of Pittsburgh home buyers, and how as they expand to new markets, their plan isn’t to be the biggest, but the best.

Start With Smarts

“We take a lot of time to think about the performance of a house, much like the per-formance of a sports car,” says Matt Moritz, vice president of construction. “People like to look at the kitchens and millwork because they’re readily apparent, but for me, what sets a house apart is how plumb, square, and level it is.”

He is quick to count off everything behind the beam that matters.

“How quickly can we get hot water to a faucet? How loud is the house? Does it feel really sturdy? Is it difficult to step outside the front door? In the end it all adds up, and those subtle details make a difference.”

Of course, first-rate millwork doesn’t hurt either. With trim carpentry that is hand-crafted and hand-installed, the quality of the home is just as apparent to anyone who isn’t a third-generation home builder. Nicky Varrenti, operations manager at Eddy Homes, likens their craftsmen to artists.And how to keep those artists around? It’s one of Eddy’s simple secrets: test

them through time, and pay them well. Cream rises to the top. “It is harder and harder to find true craftsmen in a mar-ketplace where a lot of home builders are just out to maximize profits and focus on their shareholders,” says Varrenti. “ But we have been lucky enough to keep our vendors happy. We pay a premium for their artistry.”

Happy vendors, happy customers. Another simple secret: when you work seamlessly with vendors, they do the work right the first time around. Time is the magic factor to balance: not so little that a subcontractor is out the door before the paint dries, and not so much the project drags along.Ask Nick Hillebrand why time matters.

30 GREATER PITTSBURGH’S NEW HOME | Fall 2014

(First row, left to right) Dan O’Rouke, Matt Moritz, Jon Moritz, Jeanne Moritz(second row) Andrew Litzinger, Mike Kuhar, Cristina Palamides, Nicky Varrenti(third row) Tyler Goldbach, Brad Volkar, and Vincent Happ.

Hillebrand is one of the principal owners of Don’s Appliances, a family-owned com-pany that opened its doors in the same year as Eddy Homes. Like Eddy’s home buyers, he sings the praises of their foremen, who pay an unusual amount of attention to detail.

“When they say they’re going to have everything ready for you, they do,” he says. “We don’t have to make multiple trips just to start the job. It just makes it easy.”

Ease is at the heart of the modern construc-tion industry, where everything business-side eventually becomes client-side. This is an industry that’s famous for its stealth expenses in production, transportation, and installation. Control time, and you control cost.

It’s a sentiment echoed by Pam Cook, owner of the PF Cook Brick Company. She believes that Eddy Homes has an edge because they keep an unusually keen eye on pricing.

“Some builders will put in the same allow-ances for a product year after year without keeping up with cost. But [Eddy Homes] is proactive in seeing what’s available and constantly monitoring pricing and the quality of materials. That speaks a lot for a builder, because others will send the same people in for years with the same allow-ances. Pretty soon they’re standing here not being able to select too many products.”

“We’ve developed a great trust between our companies,” she adds. “They’re open to new products and materials that their clientele might like to have. They build a lot of high-end homes, so they keep a real good handle on it.”

But at the end of the day, both vendors say it comes down to an enjoyable working ex-perience. They’ve gotten to know the whole team, from the designers and fieldmen to the Moritz family.

“In today’s day and age where everyone is cutting corners, these guys just won’t do it. And the partnership isn’t one-sided. It’s ‘What can they do for us?’ and obviously, ‘What can we do for them?” Hillebrand

says. But it’s not that complicated. “I just like working with those guys,” he says.

Know Your Market

Edward Moritz founded Eddy Homes in 1971 with the idea that building your dream home shouldn’t be so stressful. Over three decades of work, he molded a straightforward business process that was just as big as the client needed, creating opportunities to surpass expectations. Ev-ery generation since has sustained Eddy’s process, no matter who the customer is.

As the company transitioned to son Dave Moritz, he steadily brought more luxury homes to the company’s base in The South Hills, growing its presence in the high-end market by leaps and bounds. Grandsons Matt and Jon joined the com-pany in 2003 and 2005, respectively, and continued his emphasis on luxury. One of their newest projects is Copper Creek, an estate home community in Marshall Township that’s just two miles from the I-79 corridor and Cranberry Township.

The million-dollar homes of Copper Creek are stunning. They sprawl over country lots as large as 11 acres and spare none of the most desired amenities,

31www.greaterpittsburghnewhome.com

“We’ve developed a great trust between our

companies,” she adds. “They’re open to new

products and materials that their clientele

might like to have. They build a lot of high-end homes, so they keep a

real good handle on it.”

including multimedia rooms, wine cellars, and outdoor living spaces. They even bor-der a secluded nature reserve.

But Pittsburgh isn’t Silicon Valley. Mil-lion-dollar homes are an important slice of real estate, but a small one. Even those who desire unbridled luxury may not de-sire the thousands of square feet bundled with it. So for Eddy Homes, luxury at its highest price point isn’t the place to stop.

Eddy is already building homes in estab-lishments like Scarlet Ridge in Franklin Park Borough or Chapel Hill Estates in Wexford, homes which Varrenti says are at the $350,000-$600,000 price points. This is the ledge from which the company is poised to take off.

“We’ve already grown exponentially in the last two years,” says Varrenti. “For the next five, we’re getting operations in place to handle a larger volume, and build-ing the groundwork to become a larger builder.”

That groundwork is helped along by a behind-the-scenes investment in technol-ogy, keeping pace with massive changes in the construction industry. “Everything is so streamlined today. Like

others, we’ve moved past email to inte-grated building systems in the cloud,” says Matt Moritz. “We don’t have to physically take the plans from sub to sub, so we can handle all the custom work that needs to be drawn up and cycled to a lot of people. It’s becoming a lot more efficient to dis-seminate information in a process where there are a lot of hands.”

The company is actively expanding to new locations in the North Hills, where tunnel-free traffic, the commercial core of I-79 and I-279, and first-rate school districts are irresistible to buyers. It has already made a name for itself building patio homes in the South Hills, the kind of home that customers like the Paterras and Stewarts rave about.

Patio home evokes the box home or cookie-cutter model. But in the Eddy vocabulary, these homes are far more ap-pealing: modern first-floor living, an open layout and quality build, and a floor plan that’s so customizable that prices range from $300,000 all the way up to $1.8 million. With realistic square footage and a maintenance-free plan, these homes are the first choice of retirees, empty nesters, and even busy professionals.

“It’s a great product for Pittsburgh, and there’s not a lot of it,” says Jon Moritz, who is the vice president of sales. “We designed it because the city has a huge population of baby boomers who still have bigger homes even though their kids are no longer with them.”

The six available floor plans start with the Benton, which has 1,891 square feet, and build up to the Eastwood at 3,000-4,000 square feet. Each of the patio homes fea-tures thoughtful touches like a first-floor master bedroom and study and no steps up to the living area.

Not to Mention the Walk-in Closets

“I have more more storage space in this home than I had in my previous one!” Tad Paterra exclaims. “And that home was big-ger by probably 1,000 square feet.”

Roomy closets were important to the Paterras, so Eddy Homes made it work. Like many other customers, Tad and April emphasized how freeing it was to work with the construction team led by super-intendent Brad Volkar.

“It was nice to be able to talk to some-body and make some adjustments, be-cause sometimes you can’t. I’ve built three houses, and I’ve dealt with other contrac-tors who said, ‘Here’s the plan, take it or leave it,’” says Tad.

“Even though they look similar from the outside, every home that I have been inside is completely different on the in-side,” adds Lu Ann Stewart. The Stewarts re-envisioned several aspects of their floor plan. They repurposed the upstairs guest room into a large suite, adding an extra sink and a large bathtub to the bathroom, and finished their basement so that it could serve as an entertainment area. They added a sunroom to the main level, and planted another bedroom below it.

“It was all our idea,” she says excitedly. “They just worked it up for us and gave us a cost. There were a couple times that we didn’t agree upon the cost, and they were willing to work with us and come up with


something that made every-body happy. I just can’t say how [atypical] that is when you’re building something from the ground up with a builder. They are definitely willing to work with their customers.”

Working with customers means turning off the egg timer, which Eddy’s full-time design coordinator can speak to. Cristina Palamides walks customers through every aspect of the interior selec-tion process, from cabinets and countertops to flooring, plumbing, millwork, and color schemes. She is sold on the depth of Eddy’s catego-ries, which are smartly pack-aged to meet popular tastes without limiting choice.

Palamides will do what it takes to deliver a customer’s vision. She shares the Eddy family’s ethos of fluid consultation and their firm belief that you hustle to keep the customer happy.

“Regardless of whether it takes 10 meet-ings or 20, we offer our services to them,” she says. “We don’t limit interaction. Whenever they need me, they call.”

Respect Your Tradition

Leave it to a family business to know that the best homes are built with something intangible.

“At this company, there are checklists upon checklists. But not everything can be systemized,” says Matt Moritz. “Qual-ity is many things. It’s very easy to talk about the foundation’s degree of preci-sion or how we process our setup from job to job. But other things come from experience. It’s more difficult to quantify a kitchen’s aesthetic. There are a lot of years of history and education piled up there. That’s what makes it look good.”

But when you’d expect all those years of tradition to produce a surplus of confi-

dence, he takes a humbling turn. It is exacting, this need to constantly assess if you have maintained the integrity and character of your grandfather’s business.

“I like to think that we’re more focused on the customer and less on the bottom line,” Matt says. “It’s taken years to achieve that. Certainly we’re very acutely aware that those things can be broken in a very short period, even though they’ve taken a long time.” NH

www.greaterpittsburghnewhome.com 33

Matt Moritz and Jon Moritz.

(412) 221-0400 | [email protected]

The Crossings

LUXURY CUSTOM VILLA HOMES

County: Washington Township: Peters Township Developer: Eddy Homes, Inc.

Discover this unique luxury community ideally located in the heart of Peters Township and set against the gorgeous vistas of Canonsburg Lake. The Crossings is situated minutes from I-279 and I-79 and features convenient access to a variety of shopping centers, transportation, and dining.

Eddy Homes has created five new villa homes that create a sense of refined beauty and elegance . These homes feature main level living, master bedroom suites with large walk-in closets, and luxurious baths The open floor plans are perfect for entertaining with spacious great rooms, dining areas and gourmet kitchens including eating bars and islands. Additional rooms on the main level include bedrooms, studies and living rooms to accommodate guests and provide private retreat areas.

www.EddyHomes.com

Driving Directions:

NORTH: Take 79S towards WashingtonEXIT at CanonsburgLEFT onto McClelland RoadLEFT at light onto ROUTE 19 NorthRIGHT at 2nd light onto Crosswinds Dr

SOUTH: Take 79N, get off at Canonsburg EXITRIGHT onto Weavertown RoadLEFT onto ROUTE 19 NRIGHT at the 3rd light onto Crosswinds Dr

eddyh o m e s

www.EddyHomes.com(412) 221-0400 | [email protected]

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The Crossings





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Ewww.EddyHomes.com(412) 221-0400 | �[email protected]

This brochure is for illustrative purposes only and not part of a legal contract. Homes and �oor plans may vary according to alternative styles selected and are subject to change without notice. Optional and alternative items shown are available at additional cost. EDDY HOMES© 10-10-2011.

Peters Township was named aer William “Indian” Peters. Some of the �rst settlers were the Wright Brothers ( James & Joshua), James Matthews, John Sweringer, Rev. David Phillips, Andrew

Dunlevy, Daniel Townsend and Robert Bell.

LUXURY VILLA HOMES

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�e Historic Collection of Luxury Villa Homes pays homage to the history that is an integral part of Peters Township. “East Wood” was an original tract of land on Chartiers Creek owned

by Colonel Joseph Beelor, a respected veteran of the Revolutionary War. EEAST WOODEAST WOODTHETHE

Shown with Optional Window Layout

Historic CollectionHistoric CollectionShown with Optional Door and Garage Door Window PackageEwww.EddyHomes.com

(412) 221-0400 | �[email protected] brochure is for illustrative purposes only and not part of a legal contract. Homes and �oor plans may vary according to alternative styles selected

and are subject to change without notice. Optional and alternative items shown are available at additional cost. EDDY HOMES© 10-10-2011.

�e Township’s current arrowhead logo was adopted in 1976. It was designed by a local artist, Robert Chamberlain, who used an arrowhead found in Peters Township as the pattern.

LUXURY VILLA HOMES

by

�e Historic Collection of Luxury Villa Homes pays homage to the history that is an integral part of Peters Township. �e “Benton” is named a�er the �rst recorded township land tract, granted on

February 11, 1780 when Peters Township was still considered to be part of Virginia. James Matthews settled on Benton which consisted of 357 acres situated on the waters of Chartiers Creek. BBENTONBENTONTHETHE

Historic CollectionHistoric CollectionShown with Optional Door, Garage Door Window Package, and Half-Circle Window Over Double-Window in the Study

This Eddy Homes unique community is located in the heart of Peters Township, set against the gorgeous vistas of Canonsburg Lake. This is a new maintenance-free development!

Eddy Homes has created five new villa homes that create a sense of refined

beauty and elegance. These homes feature main level living, master bedroom suites with large walk-in closets and luxurious baths. The open floor plans are great for entertaining with spacious great rooms, dining

areas and gourmet kitchens including eating bars and islands. Additional rooms on the main level include bedrooms, studies and living rooms.

35

Historic CollectionHistoric Collectionwww.EddyHomes.com(412) 221-0400 | �[email protected]


�e �rst Post O ce in Peters Township was located in �ompsonville in a store owned by Moses and John �ompson. �e o ce was established in 1815 with Moses �ompson appointed as Postmaster.

LUXURY VILLA HOMES

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�e Historic Collection of Luxury Villa Homes pays homage to the history that is an integral part of Peters Township. �e “Turnbridge” is named a�er an original tract of land granted to Robert

�ompson for a purchase price of 3 pounds, 1 shelling, and 8 pennies on April 8, 1788. Presently, the 370 acre settlement is known as �ompsonville. TTURNBRIDGETURNBRIDGETHETHE

Shown with Optional Door and Garage Door Window PackageEwww.EddyHomes.com(412) 221-0400 | �[email protected]


Peters Township was originally part of the territory of the Native Americans of the Six Nations of New York. �e tribes included Shawnee, Delaware, and the Iroquois (or Mingo Indians).

LUXURY VILLA HOMES

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�e Historic Collection of Luxury Villa Homes pays homage to the history that is an integral part of Peters Township. “Stonewall” was a private academy in the township ran by Solomon Bell in the

mid-1800’s. �e Bell family owned the original 1812 farm in where the Rolling Hills Country Club is located today on East McMurray Road.

SSTONEWALLSTONEWALLTHETHE

Historic CollectionHistoric CollectionShown with Optional Door and Garage Door Window PackageEHistoric CollectionHistoric Collectionwww.EddyHomes.com

(412) 221-0400 | �[email protected] brochure is for illustrative purposes only and not part of a legal contract. Homes and �oor plans may vary according to alternative styles selected

and are subject to change without notice. Optional and alternative items shown are available at additional cost. EDDY HOMES© 10-10-2011

Peters Township was incorporated in 1781 as one of the 13 original Townships of Washington County when it became part of Pennsylvania. Prior to 1781, the Peters Township area was part of Virginia.

Over the years, portions of Peters Township were sectioned o� to form other municipalities; eventually, leaving us with the 19.5 square mile present con�guration.

LUXURY VILLA HOMES

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�e Historic Collection of Luxury Villa Homes pays homage to the history that is an integral part of Peters Township. �e “Petersburg” is named a�er an original tract of land owned by John Melloney.

Presently, the 392 acre settlement is located adjacent to the old high school building at theunderpass on Bebout Road. PPETERSBURGPETERSBURGTHETHE

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The Crossings





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Driving Directions:



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