Frank Madia slowly opens the door to his newly built model home in Pine Township. His black and gray beard fits snug around a warm smile, while he extends his arm for a handshake. The $2 million home is in a community called The Heights of North Park, one of Madia’s three beautiful and prospering developments in the Pittsburgh region.

When you first meet Frank, you can tell the man is built like a Blackberry. Names, dates and projects bounce through his mind, while his phone rattles on his belt. “At least 30,” Madia said, when asked how many phone calls he receives per day. “Then I have meetings on top of all that.”

His daily schedule is filled with client meetings, contract negotiations and throwing numbers at accountants. Evenings and weekends are also time for work. The endless parade of chores is meant to guarantee one thing: Madia Homes will build you the custom home of your dreams.

History
Frank Madia grew up on Pittsburgh’s North Side. His father worked for the city’s port authority and he had no interest or experience in the housing market. But after attending the Community College of Allegheny County, Madia began to work in construction. He then became a realtor and broker before establishing Madia Homes in 1979. “I just decided to do it,” the now 56-year-old said. “I hired a crew, bought some lots and started to get
some contracts.”

Madia literally erected his company from the ground up. His first office was in his basement with the only mode of communication being a phone and beeper. “If you’re in building, you got to start there,” he said. “I grew up in the city. I didn’t inherit the business or anything, so it was tough. It was tough to get going.” Now, he has a 3,500 square foot office in Wexford accompanied by a full-time, eight-person staff.

Madia’s wife, Jean, also contributes in the office, while his children, Luke and Sarah, are his marketing whiz kids. Luke’s years of multi-million dollar sales experience and Sarah’s marketing background gives Frank Madia a fresh and technological savvy duo at his disposal. Both children, who make up The Madia Team, work for Prudential Preferred Reality in the North Hills and have the task of selling every home their father builds.

Luke began sweeping floors for Madia Homes as a teenager and earned his real estate license when he was a senior in high school. While attending Grove City College, Luke showed homes over the weekends and turned full-time after graduation. Sarah, on the other hand, didn’t start working with her father until after college, when she designed Madia Homes’ new web site (www.madiahomes.com). “There were blueprints all over the house,” Sarah Madia said of growing up in a construction family. “That’s what we were surrounded with.”

“They started out like I did,” Frank Madia said. “My son has built a few houses. He hasn’t decided if that’s what he wants to specialize in yet. I probably talk to them daily. They do open houses on the weekends and they’re always out with customers.”

Madia Homes - a collection of trim carpenters, subcontractors, laborers and foreman - builds and sells 15 to 20 custom homes a year, ranging in prices from $500,000 to $4 million. And despite the recent economic in-housing bubble, Madia Homes has continued to flourish.

The Process
Frank Madia has three developments to choose from.

The Heights of North Park is a luxury home community nestled in the hills of Pine Township. The development is a 30-minute drive from Downtown Pittsburgh and offers homes ranging in price from $800,000 to $4 million. North Park, which features 3,000 acres of outdoor recreation, surrounds the development.

The Manor and The Meadows are Madia’s two other developments. The Manor, located in McCandless Township, consists of 27 half plus acre lots on the adjoining North Park. The Manor’s homes range in price starting at $550,000.

The Meadows is a fairly new development in Hampton Township. It consists of 62 carriage (duplex) homes that range in price starting at $500,000.

“We’ll sit down and talk about the kind of house they want,” Madia said. “I’ll pull out a lot of plans and we’ll start looking at different layouts and try to come up with something they like or we’ll start from scratch. Sometimes people bring their own drawings in for me to look at.”

“We’ll come up with spec sheets and prices and see if it works for everybody,” he added. “Sometimes people add to it or we take away. I have a relationship with ESB Bank and if it’s in one of our developments we get a preferred rate. They treat all my customers very well. We try to make the process as painless as we can.”

It takes Madia Homes seven months to two years to complete a house. The bigger the project, the longer it takes to build. “It depends on what we’re doing,” Madia said.

When it comes to style, Frank Madia is “pretty flexible.” Madia Homes builds modern, traditional, stone, stucco homes or something totally unique. “We do all styles. Right now I have a French provencial going, a contemporary going and we even have some regular traditionals going. We’ve built Victorian’s. We’re not locked into just one style. There are some people that specialize in a certain house or a period type house. We’ll build any design. If it can be drawn, we can build it and we will.”

Madia Homes - a collection of trim carpenters, subcontractors, laborers and foreman - builds and sells 15 to 20 custom homes a year, ranging in prices from $500,000 to $4 million.

Madia’s vast group of subcontractors - some of them who have been with him for over 15 years - take over from there. From concrete foundation, windows, lumber, heating and landscaping, Madia Homes’ step-by-step process schedules a map of construction all the way through the finishing touches.

The list of subcontractors Madia Homes uses includes: Pella Windows & Doors, Contemporary Foundations, Acme Clay Products, Inc., 84 Lumber, Premier Garage, Cuvee Kitchen Designs, Inc., MLB Interiors, Inc. (dba Your Hart’s Desire), Zeigler Heating, Inc., Weyerhaeuser Landscaping and Wholesale Builders Supply.

Madia Homes also offers the Madia Insurance Agency, Inc., which supplies home, life, auto and business insurance.

What Sets Madia Homes Apart
Frank Madia travels the world looking for new ideas. Whether he’s attending a builder’s seminar in Florida or simply on vacation in Hawaii, Madia is always at work. “I remember I saw a panel on an elevator in Maui and I liked it,” he said. “We took a picture of it and turned it into a whole den. We’ll take pictures of different woodwork in different parts of the world. A lot of times we are able to use it.”

The information is then dropped on the desk of Keith Osborne, Madia’s foreman, trim carpenter designer and
right-hand man. Osborne is also given the task of searching through builder’s and architectural magazines for fresh ideas. “Frank’s a pretty high-energy guy, so he’s always thinking about this stuff,” Osbourne said. “And he’s always willing to try something unique.”

The most intimate aspect of Madia Homes is their elegant trim custom woodworking and attention to detail. The company employs three full-time trim carpenters, who Madia claims are the best in the business. “There is no one out there that has trim carpenters that are as good as mine,” he said.

Madia Homes creates different designs for every house. “You don’t just have to pick from column A or column B,” Osborne said. “I know when I go into other homes by other builders, it’s not that the work is bad but it’s far more generic.”Madia Homes uses their trim carpentry skills in themed rooms such as home theaters, bars, exercise rooms, dens and kitchens. These special areas suit the tastes and needs of each customer.

“I get to know them really well,” Osborne said of his customers. “Our houses take a little longer to build. Part of the reason is everything is custom. We’ll make changes along the way if we need to. We’ll do whatever we have to do to get the folks what they want.”

What customers want is dens that have beamed ceilings with decorative moldings, bars with solid wood tops and raised panels, living rooms with trim woodwork over the fireplace and kitchens with detailed cabinetry. “We spend a lot of time working with the cabinetry companies to make sure the trim work that we’re doing matches up well with the work that they’re doing,” Osborne said. “I’ll contact them and they’ll send me a picture or sample. The rest of the trim is based partially on that.”

Customer Satisfaction
Tony and Kim Battaglia recently moved into a house at The Heights of North Park. Construction on their home began in September 2007 and was finished 13 months later. The couple chose Madia Homes because of the location of the lot and the reputation of Frank Madia as a builder.

“We had a couple bumps along the way, but nothing that was related to him,” Kim Battaglia said. “He was great. He was very attentive. He has supervisors that run his jobs, so you pretty much work with them. But he was coming to things…even when we didn’t ask him to. So we liked that extra service.”

The Battaglias chose one of Madia’s signature bars as their special feature. Tony and Kim worked with Madia Homes’ trim carpenters step by step in order to come up with a suitable design. “It’s beautiful,” Kim Battaglia said. “We’re very pleased with it. He has his own people that build it from scratch. I kind of described what I wanted and they drew it. We tweaked it here and there.”

“We knew from the beginning that that’s who we wanted to build with,” she added. “We had built a previous home and this was just kind of like the dream house we always wanted.”

Exactly what Frank Madia and his company guarantees.NH