Leading developers of modern and sustainable coastal properties, Bella Homes has bold ambitions to expand its portfolio in 2026
Bella Homes (Bella) has a vision to ‘lead the evolution of eco-luxury living through design innovation, quality and sustainability’ – a vision the company has certainly been living up to over the past 12 months.
Founded by experienced developer Stephen Petrucci in 2014, Bella has gone from strength to strength, building high-end coastal homes in South Florida. It has
recently completed a project in Ocean Ridge, which was featured on the front cover of Luxury Homes magazine. “That was a huge honor,” Stephen opens. “6107 North Ocean Boulevard is a beautiful home – a coastal modern three-story house, beside the beach. We have another Ocean Ridge project, 3 Hudson Avenue, which is currently under construction and should be completed within the next 12 months. Those are typical spec houses that we own but we’re also working on several custom homes, as we build both. We have three projects currently under construction in Delray Beach and a fourth in the design phase. We’re working on the plans and that will soon be submitted for permits. In addition, we’ve had several sales in Delray Beach lately. We’re excited about all those new projects and about our new clients.”
Stephen portrays Ocean Ridge and Delray Beach as ‘highly sought after’ areas and highlights the importance of his personal proximity. “It’s local to where I am, which is great,” he continues. “I want to be close to the projects. People want to be close to coastal lines, the beach, and vibrant downtown areas. Location is key for me.”
As builders of both spec and custom homes, Bella creates unique luxury properties. “Every house is completely different, whether we’re building it for a potential future client or for a current client,” says Stephen. “We’re not production home builders, so we never repeat the finishes in any of our homes. We look for the newest and most innovative designs out there and constantly keep up to date with trends and smart technology.
“The demand for smart home integrations is huge. We use setups such as the Lutron homework system, which I’d describe as the Rolls Royce system of centralized lighting controls. We fit systems which control lighting, security cameras and music, install high end Luma cameras and Sonos music systems – everything is pre-wired. This means you can set the mood in the whole house with just one touch of a button.”
Sustainable living
Specializing in eco-luxury homes, Bella combines modern design and high-end installations with sustainable living. As a member of the Florida Green Building Coalition, the business is passionate about sustainability and protecting its natural surroundings. Stephen explains: “We typically build our homes with metal roofs, insulation, and LED lighting, which brings down the SEER rating, alongside high-end variable speed A/C units which are great for humidity control.”
Alongside sustainability, Bella strives to maintain a seamless and positive experience for its clients throughout the home building process. Stephen says it can be a stressful time for customers but having a great team onboard helps minimize that tremendously.
“We’ve gone through several projects now, and we understand how crucial it is to gain the client’s confidence and trust,” he elaborates. “We keep them updated with weekly Zoom calls and give them access to our online software, Buildertrend. This means they receive updates on tasks that require action, we’re both working to the same schedule and tasks are getting completed. Our entire team works efficiently together, from our accounting team who take care of the financing, through to our purchasing team who take care of the estimating for the clients. We all work together on the client budget, and we get a bid out.
“We also help facilitate with the architectural design phase, collaborating with architect design teams, landscape architects and civil engineers – it’s a one-stop-shop. We typically have an in-house design team, but we are happy to work with a client’s designer. Sometimes we’ll bring in external third-party design teams, depending on the complexity of the project, to ensure we’re making the best product on the market. We bring the whole team to the client, making their lives much easier and reducing that stress.”
Bella is looking to continue its exponential growth over the next year while still providing that same high-quality product it prides itself on. Stephen reveals more about the future: “It’s important we don’t grow too fast, enabling us to handle our workload confidently and to the best of our ability. I’d particularly love to grow the custom homes side of the business – ideally, our spec homes and our custom build projects would be 50/50. Right now, we have more spec homes, so I’d really like to even that out. That’s our goal. Quite honestly, the industry was a little bit tougher in 2025, but I feel as though we’re going to have a shift in the market now as there’s an influx of buyers starting to come to Florida from the New York area. During Covid, everyone was coming down here and buying properties, which drove up prices. This has slowed down over the last 12 to 18 months, however I do think we’ll see a pickup – interest rates are coming down, as are house prices. These market trends are going to help us in the home-building sector, especially the luxury side of it, which hasn’t been affected too much by interest rates. People don’t usually get mortgages in our price range.”
Focusing further ahead, Bella has an exciting and ambitious five-year strategy centered around the scale of its projects. “We shall continue what we’re doing while moving up and aiming for bigger projects,” concludes Stephen. “We’re looking at purchasing a $3 million piece of property and building a $40 million home in the next two to three years. This is a monumental step up for us, from building $15 million homes, to building homes in the region of $40 million to $50 million and I’m undertaking a lot of research to make sure we can execute designs of this level.”