Musser Home Builders knows how to bring a vision to life. The company has been designing and building custom homes, additions, and renovations since 1972. Founded by Chester and Ruth Musser, the central Pennsylvania-based business began as a small local builder, handling a handful of homes a year.
In 1988, Jeff and Beth Musser, the founders’ son and daughter-in-law, purchased the company “and really transformed it,” says Chief Operating Officer Joe Tuschak. The focus quickly broadened, and the company’s success grew along with its areas of expertise. “Today we’re building high-quality custom homes, additions, and renovations for local clients within a 60-mile radius of Dillsburg, Pennsylvania,” he says.
Completely custom
The company is best known for its ability to deliver a custom home that meets each client’s unique needs. “We provide a design-build experience that not a lot of other custom home builders in this area do,” says Tuschak. “We have two in-house designers that handle your design from the ground up. We don’t have a series of plans that people can select from and then make changes; it is literally whatever ideas that the client has that they want to create, we create for them. I think that really sets us apart—that we handle all of those things in-house.”
This approach, naturally, takes a high level of commitment from the team. “We always joke that at our company, we die in the details because there are so many details in every house that we have,” says Tuschak. “All the way down to the color of your toilet flange and all the way up to the color of cabinetry, everything is custom. There are so many details that go into each one of our projects. It keeps us on our toes.”
The team works closely with clients throughout the build to achieve this level of customization. “We have an amazing project management team that partners with our clients the entire way through the process from start to finish,” says Tuschak. “From the first phone call all the way to handing our clients the keys, they are the ones that are holding their hands and walking them through the process each step of the way. We also have two interior decorators that walk you through the entire selection process.”
With so much support, clients can easily take their visions from imagination to reality. “Being a custom builder, anything is possible,” Tuschak says. “From the selection standpoint, it’s not, ‘Here, you have A, B, and C to choose from.’ It’s anything that’s out there that we can get our hands on—we will put it in our client’s house if that’s what they are really looking for.”
Relationships first
This level of support and communication is not limited to the design and preconstruction process; it persists throughout the build. “We have a great build team with multiple foremen, carpenters, laborers,” Tuschak says. “We really take a lot of pride in [the job] and do a lot of quality control walkthroughs throughout the project, so that whenever we do get to that final walkthrough, the home or renovation is turnkey. It’s 100 percent completed.”
To this day, Musser Home Builders remains family-owned and operated, which has a major impact on how business is done. “Being a family company is wonderful,” Tuschak says. “We really care about one another here at the company. A lot of us are friends outside of the company and spend a lot of time together even after the office hours are closed.”
This is important because building relationships “is also our number one core value,” he says. “Relationships first. That not only goes for our clients, but for our people and our trade partners and vendors as well. So being that family-owned company, coming to work every day, it really feels like you’re going to work with your brothers and sisters and walking alongside them.”
Any conflict is much easier to deal with as a result of these close ties. “It allows us to have those difficult conversations a lot easier and just work through issues and problems that arise,” Tuschak says. “And we know that that’s going to happen, [so we do] our best to walk alongside one another to work through those issues.”
Committed to quality
Another key to the company’s success has been its ability to evolve with the marketplace. “Throughout the years, obviously the building industry has changed, and we are always trying to keep up with the newest trends and products,” Tuschak says. The team is careful to only adopt new developments that will have longevity in the marketplace. “We want to make sure that a product has been out there and stood the test of time—we’re not putting the ‘greatest and newest’ thing in there and then, over time, it fails,” he says.
Such attention to quality and detail has not gone unnoticed, and Musser Home Builders has won numerous awards recognizing the company’s workmanship and leadership in Central Pennsylvania. In 2022, the firm earned the Harrisburg Builders Association’s Pyramid Award for Best Kitchen Renovation over $100,001; Best Residential Renovation over $100,001; and Best Single-Family Model Home over 5,001 square feet. The company also won the Harrisburg Builders Association’s Parade of Homes 2024 for Single-Family Home in the $2.35 to 2.45 million category; Best Interior; Best Kitchen; Best Primary Bath; Best Exterior; and Best Craftsmanship.
In addition, Musser Home Builders has won the Harrisburg-based Simply the Best award, which recognized the company for a number of accomplishments. The firm has also been named one of the fastest growing companies in the region, as well as a Top 250 Private Company.
Planning for a bright future
The team is planning ahead and laying the groundwork for future success—continuing to pursue excellence, says Tuschak. “That is one of our core values: continuing to grow, to learn different practices and different methods in the construction industry, to really push the limits of what we can do.”
The company is enjoying continued growth, “but it will be done responsibly, with plenty of careful planning,” he says. “Obviously, we’re not trying to grow wildly. Everybody knows in a company if you grow too fast, there are growing pains that come along with that. So, we’re just always trying to better ourselves and add key people. That’s one thing that’s different about us—whenever we do grow and hire, we really want people who fit the mold of our company.”
Finding someone who fits the company culture, he says, is more important than finding someone who already has the construction skills. “We know that we can train somebody. If someone can really live by our core values, we can teach them construction. But if you don’t have integrity always, you don’t want to continually learn, you’re not a relationship-first person, then it’s going to be tough to work together. But if that’s something that you always strive for, those are the type of people that we like to work with.”
The team has a number of exciting projects already lined up for the near future. “We’ve got quite a few houses in the planning process that are really pushing the limits, which is great because we’re always learning something new and enjoying that,” Tuschak shares. Armed with this desire to grow and learn, a committed team, strong company values, and over half a century of experience, Musser Home Builders is well placed to keep making waves in the region’s custom home building market.
