“I feel like I thrive under chaos,” she explains. “I like to problem solve. I don’t think I’ve had any transaction that hasn’t had some sort of issue pop up. I like being able to navigate that — to help people get into where they want to be.”

Amid it all, Kneifl has the skills to deflect the stress from her clients.

“A lot of times, my clients don’t know that there were any problems because I already solved them,” she says. “If I come to them with a problem, 99.9% of the time I also have a solution for them.”

Being part of the community here in the Chippewa Valley is important to Kneifl. While she grew up in a military family that moved frequently, she put down roots in the Chippewa Valley in 2005. Nearly 20 years later, she’s a graduate of both Chippewa Valley Technical College and UW-Stout and has experience as a paralegal and in business administration. She became a Realtor about three years ago, and threw herself fully into the work.

These days, you’ll find Kneifl at almost every community event, fair, or festival in the area as well as serving on the Fall Creek School Board.

“How can you sell a house in a community you’re not familiar with?” she asks.

In addition to visibility to the public — which she says helps gain business — Kneifl prides herself on taking extra steps to both market properties and to make herself available to clients whenever they may need her. On the marketing side, that means promoting properties through traditional methods such as open houses and flyers as well as with frequently viewed Facebook videos. “If you click on a house, you’re going to probably see my videos,” she says.

And when it comes to availability, Kneifl isn’t the kind of Realtor who shuts her phone off at 5pm. She’s even been known to work while on vacation. It’s all part of meeting clients where they are in the home-buying process and being open, honest, and communicative.

“Because of how I communicate and how thorough I am in explaining things, I find a lot of first-time homebuyers are drawn to me,” Kneifl says. So are many other kinds of clients: She’s worked with people seeking waterfront homes, commercial real estate, and rental properties. While she mostly focuses on real estate in the Chippewa Valley, she will travel as far away as Medford, La Crosse, Spooner, and Hudson.

Kneifl has developed the expertise necessary to help her clients be realistic. For sellers, that means that the highest offer on a property isn’t always the best. For buyers, that means recognizing there’s more than one way to make an offer stand out.

“I find myself talking people out of properties more than I talk them into properties,” she says. “People get so eager, and when they walk in the house they’re looking at it with rose-colored glasses. My job is to make sure that when we walk in there and when they get to closing that there are as few surprises as possible.”

Ultimately, Kneifl is driven to make her clients happy.

“That’s what brings me joy, that’s what keeps me going,” she says. “I know that in the end, I’m going to be part of the largest purchase of someone’s life.”