The Moss Family

Joy,

My wife, two children and I live at Legacy Landing, which I believe you now represent.

I would like to take this opportunity to tell you a little about the development and how pleased we are with our move. First of all it is one of the few places left in Derry Township where you can purchase large plots of land. Also the price per acre is substantially lower than other areas we looked at for the township. We live on the island side of the development ( in the middle). We have a right of way down to the Swatara Creek, and we can walk there in less than five minutes. The Legacy Landing side of the creek is beautiful, with multiple access points for canoes, swimming, or just exploring. My children and their friends have caught crayfish, frogs, and small fish with nets.  Musser even clears the brush for easier travel along the path.

Our proximity to Harrisburg (10 minutes), Lancaster (30 minutes), and the West Shore (15 minutes), is excellent. We can be to any of these places in less than ½ hour; Route 283 is less than five minutes and the Turnpike in eight minutes away. As far as shopping goes Supermarkets, Target, Friendly’s, Kmart, Dairy Queen, 7-11, Hersheypark, and the outlets are within minutes.

Also, the town of Hummelstown is beautiful. A lot of little restaurants, a candy shop, drug store with a massive gift shop and multiple ice cream places.  We are also within just a few minutes of Hershey Med center and Hershey Foods/Entertainment.

The school system is one of the best in Pennsylvania, and we are about ten minutes from the campus.  The school and town have a multitude of extra curricular activities available to the kids and community.  Also, all the schools are on one campus; which is pretty convenient if you have kids in different grades.            

We also wanted to take this time to express our satisfaction with Jeff Musser and his entire organization, Jim, Dick, Brandon, Ruth and all of their sub-contractors, for making our building experience a pleasant one.  This is our second home we have built from the ground up.  The first experience we had with another builder was anything but peaceful, from the beginning to the call backs were a battle.  Heidi and I were very weary of doing it again, especially with a house of this caliber.  These fears were put to rest in our initial conversations, and after our first personal meeting.  We enjoyed that they constantly try to familiarize themselves with our intents, concerns, dreams and ideas before they attempted to sell us anything. Offering their honest opinions about our collaborative ideas always gave us the impression that they  were not just trying to sell us a cookie cutter house but truly something we could call a HOME.                        

During the design phase I became familiar with Jim Barton, whom I am sure you know is Jeff’s right hand man. I think for ten months I called him nearly everyday, sometimes twice, three, four times a day.  But, to his credit every time, and I do mean every time he was courteous, professional, knowledgeable and amazingly helpful.  No matter what my concern or question he would answer it, or point us in the right direction.  But, even more meaningful to me is that if he did not know the answer, he would not give us an answer before he was able to investigate all the facts so as to not lead us in the wrong direction.

 We also were impressed with how Jeff and Jim took our 30-40 ideas off a piece of paper and translated it into our dream home.  The knowledge and experience that they brought to the table helped us think of things we would never had addressed with other cookie cutter builders, especially with some of our unique design challenges, such as adding an in-laws suite with separate utilities and tying them into the main structure.  Most of the time these ideas saved us time, money and more importantly wasted effort.  I would call Jim and he would tell me “Oh we thought of that already, it’s been taken care of”.  When they told us it would take two-three  months to design the home we laughed; our last 3,000 sq. ft. house was designed, priced and under construction in one month.  None the less, it took almost three months to come to a final plan.  This once again showed us how meticulous they are.

When construction began, we had the pleasure to meet Dick and Brandon, whom always treated our entire family with respect and were able to answer our questions or find out the correct answer within a short period of time.  One such example of this was when Heidi went out to the site Brandon and Dick would ask the subs if they would lower their radios, seemingly out of respect.  In my opinion their personal qualities were only part of their assets.  They also did amazing work, especially their finish work, we were pleasantly surprised every visit to the house.  The extra added moldings and independent design helped to really make the home.  In our last house we spent endless dollars looking to cover up the house with furniture, and accent pieces.  In our new home, we are shopping for furniture to display parts of the house.  Another such example of their workmanship is that when we visited the house, if something was a little off, we could be guaranteed that on the next visit it would have been immediately adjusted.

One other aspect of the process that impressed us was their choice of subcontractors.  All of the people that we dealt with were extremely helpful, easy to deal with and incredibly talented at their jobs.  Specifically: Joe Essis from Essis Flooring, Sasha at Fagers, Down East, Randy the plumber, Dave Gaffney the electrician,  Barry Griffith from Harrisburg Electric, Jen at Yale electric, and Rick Light from Swartz.  I was also amazed at how each of them was able to give us ideas for other parts of the construction process, and how not one of them pushed anything on us.  They listened to our needs, requirements, and wishes, and helped us meet them as best as they could.  As a matter of fact we still deal with Joe Essis, and Randy Schaffer on a regular basis for additional work.

The last thing I would like to mention is that in business you rarely have the opportunity to work with a company this honest, moral and ethical and who has the values and integrity that Musser has, from Jeff and Jim all the way down to the subs.  I told Jim early in the process that in my experience you can either work for a client or with the client. With their company we all worked together from the beginning to the end and from the smallest aspects to the largest.  I also believe that we became more than just business associates. We look forward to having all the Musser crew over for the first big barbecue!

Since we have lived in the house we have continued to maintain a relationship with Musser. Jim is adamant about contacting him for any call backs, even if it does not have to do with them directly. I also still speak with Jim for advice on other aspects. For example we did our own landscaping, and grass. Jim recommended machinery, and products which were very helpful.