Joan Marie Fenstermaker

Joan has served as my real estate attorney since 2002, when I purchased my first home as a single woman. The number of challenges she had to deal with were staggering: a hostile seller, an inept title company, and a lender who wired the down payment to a non-existent office. What should have been on...e hour became nearly four. Joan was unflappable throughout the ordeal, fixing each problem as it arose, keeping me calm and collected, and all with mixture of professionalism, grace, and humor. Seven years later, in 2009, she helped my husband and me with the sale of that first condo and the purchase of our house, which again involved some odd challenges--but this time well after closing. About 2.5 years after we purchased the house, we received a letter from the county notifying us that our home would soon be sold due to unpaid back taxes. In a panic, I sent Joan an email on a Saturday afternoon. I heard back from her less than 5 minutes later. Over the course of the next several days, she tracked down the source of the problem (the title company never sent forwarded the back taxes they had collected from the previous owner), got the error fixed, and an official receipt of payment from Cook County. At every step of the way, Joan kept us informed, with written record whenever possible from all parties involved. And again, she did so with professionalism, patience, humor, and no shortage of TLC. She's a keeper.