My first contact with Drew Holzwarth was over voicemail. A very excited guy had left me a voicemail regarding Big Builder's May issue, where we featured a number of private home builder executives talking about baring the badge of survival in today's market. Honestly, my first thought was, "Oh, no. What did I get wrong?"

But no. And thank, God. I hate printing corrections.

Holzwarth didn't want to talk smack about any of the builder execs we had written about. He didn't want to tell me about the trouble some of them were in. As it was, most of them had been quite frank about everything from their need to scare up cash to keep their bankers happy to their plans to rebuild their companies post-bankruptcy. No, what Hozwarth wanted to talk to me about came from a single line in the story's intro, which admittedly was not written by me but rather my editor:

"Not to be left out of the ‘what's next?' scenario are a few dozen pros who have played their noncompete clauses like violins during the market swan dive."

That was Holzwarth in a nutshell. After resigning from NVR's management ranks in early 2007, he subsequently all but vanished from the Central Virginia scene for two years, waiting quietly on the sidelines for his noncompete to expire. But he's back in business with the recent launch of Piedmont Realty & Construction.

It would have seemed unlikely that Holzwarth would've ever built himself what I would consider an illustrious 13-year career with home building's primo company, NVR. After all, the guy graduated from Penn State with an education in criminal justice and Spanish. But Holzwarth was the son of what would seem a mildly successful average Joe who happened to moonlight as a remodeler. And that's when the sickness set in.

You know what I'm talking about. It's that thing that every home builder has that keeps them in the business for a lifetime. Is it a genetic mutation? Is it an adrenaline addiction? I don't know. But it's something that has wrapped around them at their very core. (Seriously, what kind of sadists must home builders be to spend lifetimes surfing the market's gnarliest undulations, where every good wave caught is countered by not just a fall but a crush that reminds them that, yes, they are in fact very human?)

Holzwarth eats, sleeps, and breathes home building. He doesn't play golf. And he sure as heck doesn't spend his free time reading novels. This one-two combination of focus and drive no doubt was one of the things that catapulted Holzwarth up the management ranks at NVR as a young guy. Holzwarth started with the company in 1994, spending his last seven years with the company as a vice president and division manager of Ryan Homes in Washington, D.C.

By his own testament, he had a good life with the company and loved his time with it. It would be hard to do otherwise. Thanks to some friendly market tailwinds and his supervision, the division grew from less than $5 million in profits at the beginning of his management tenure to more than $56 million in profits by 2005. About the biggest hiccup was that he was asked to transfer to Central Virginia. He turned the offer down a few times--he really loves the D.C. metro area--but finally agreed after NVR chairman Dwight Schar asked him to make a list of what it would take to get him to move. Holzwarth put 11 things on that wish list, all of which Schar granted him plus one more perk he hadn't considered.

But as with many people with a strong entrepreneurial bent, it turned out that it wasn't enough. In January 2007, Holzwarth announced his resignation, becoming "the first vice president to resign in 11 years," he said. The reaction among his colleagues was severe.

"People asked me if I had lost my mind," Holzwarth said.

But Holzwarth made good use out of his two years on the sidelines. Not only did he become COO of Stonehaus, a local multifamily, land, and commercial developer, but he also completed an executive MBA program at the University of Virginia's Darden School of Business, a move that gave him entrée into a network that would prove critical to both hatching the plan for a new home building business and launching it. (Yes, that means his banker is an alum.)

The kind of company he's building is a hybrid, a careful crossbreeding of public builder financial management and operational accountability with private builder attention to detail and flexibility. For this reason, Holzwarth can talk equally as passionately about a cycle time of 92 days and a cash turn of 5.2 times a year--he thinks he could get to 6 turns a year if he could pay his subs on a 45-day rather than a 30-day cycle--as furniture-grade cabinetry and craftsmanship that means losing two days of production because he insists on drywall inspection with lights.

This balance of big business on a human scale is seemingly winning him a number of champions. From a strained developer who's willing to parlay the cost of a lot until a home is sold to a banker who's willing to lend him some money to build a few models to manufacturers who are willing to give him some very competitive pricing on products. (On this last point, you seriously wouldn't believe some of the deals he's getting. He's not on par with his former employer, but he estimates he's 25% below other regionals.) It's like everyone in the local daisy chain is doing whatever they can to make sure he doesn't bellyflop in the first year.

All he has to do is sell homes.

I didn't tour all four of the communities in which he's got a stake; I only got a look at what he's doing in the master-planned community of Spring Creek and an infill community called Poplar Square. Crews were still racing to complete a bank of townhomes in Poplar Square in time for a great unveiling during the local Parade of Homes this fall, but Holzwarth appeared to be off to a decent start at Spring Creek. At the time of my tour, he had one family moved in to one of his homes, four signed contracts, and contract appointments set with two additional buyers. But the pressure's already on to ramp up quickly to meet benchmarks for 2010. He's got to sell 24 homes and a model to be in the clear for that project.

For many builders these days, it's an aggressive goal. But Holzwarth seems to take it in stride, confident in his ability to bring a fresh-looking, earth-friendly--he doesn't really believe in green certification--and profitable product to market. There's already contemplation of expansion, with an eye on the Northern Virginia market. "We can do 60 homes a year with our current staff," he says.

It's hard not to just adore guys like Holzwarth. They've got passion for what they do, excitement about the future, and faith in their abilities to succeed. Their enthusiasm is contagious, even if the hurdles are tangible. But Holzwarth is far from alone. More noncmpetes expire, and seemly every day there are new home building enterprises cropping up like crocuses in the snow, hopefully the first signs of spring after a long winter. They emerge from the wreckage of failed companies, they develop as bolt-ons to existing companies, and they sprout as organic start-ups. Whatever their roots and whatever their fate, they are, in their infancy, home building's next generation.