If anyone should understand the value of a will or trust, it’s Jane Armstrong. Twice widowed, Armstrong is thankful she and both of her late husbands planned for the unseen tragedies that cut their marriages short, even as they anticipated years of being together.
Armstrong’s first husband died in a snowmobile accident when she was 43. No one could have predicted this outcome because he would rather have been playing golf, she notes.
Her second husband suffered from cardiac issues, so they expected he would die before her, Armstrong recalls, and they had a plan in place for when that sad day arrived.
Unfortunately, this is not always the case, she adds.
“Sometimes, a family doesn’t have the luxury of planning, which can be financially devastating. When you’re widowed – male or female – there are consequences.”
Today, Armstrong is a residential Realtor who serves buyers and sellers in Tennessee, Georgia and Nevada. (More on Nevada in a few paragraphs.) To stand out in these competitive markets, she’s drawing on her personal experiences with loss to help real estate clients who have recently suffered the same.
Armstrong fell into this niche while living and doing business in Nevada during the Great Recession of 2008-2009. To stay afloat as the economy was sinking, she became certified in short sales and spent the next few years focusing on foreclosures. She negotiated more than 100 short sales and was soon serving multiple clients who were older than 55 or in the military.
“Nevada was the poster child for the recession; I had my best year ever in 2012,” Armstrong recalls with no visible pleasure. “I helped many of those people transition to assisted living. I’d sell their house, handle the estate sale, line up the movers and help them navigate the legal process.”
Armstrong continues to do this work now that she’s living and working in the Chattanooga area. She also provides probate real estate services for people who had a loved one die without a will or a trust.
“I’ve met with a few attorneys here that do probate work because I want to reach people before they need me,” she says. “I don’t care if I sell their house or not.”
Armstrong says her probate work is more than a key part of her business model, it’s also her passion. Having experienced the death of two husbands and other close family members (including her mother, who died at 100 years old), she’s able to empathize with her clients and guide them through a difficult transition as they mourn.
“Working with grieving families makes you more compassionate,” she says.
Probate work is just one of several avenues of business for Armstrong. For example, in addition to assisting people who have lost a loved one, she helps out-of-state clients relocate to Chattanooga, where she’s lived since 2020. Specifically, Armstrong has been paving the way to the Scenic City area for real state clients from Nevada.
Two recent transactions saw her sell farms to transplants from Las Vegas.
“They’re thrilled,” she says with a smile. “One couple is boarding horses and growing lavender, and my friends in Dunlap built a big workshop where they make off-road vehicles.”
Armstrong attributes her recent success with relocations to her ability to develop a relationship with her clients.
“Real estate is all about relationships. I don’t care what people say about buying leads and all the other things Realtors do now. If you want to buy leads, fine, but I can do business anywhere because I build relationships.”
Armstrong contends that some new Realtors drop out of the business because they lack this essential skill.
“You have to be authentic and giving; it can’t be about you. People will let you take the lead on one of the biggest financial transactions of their life once they trust you.”
Armstrong has aligned her business with Real Broker. Although the company operates virtually, she and fellow agent Brian Kelly have a brick-and-mortar office near the airport. Armstrong is a member of the firm’s 200-agent strong Premier Group, a so-called “mega-team” founded by David Keener out of North Carolina.
Although Armstrong has traditionally preferred to work alone, Premier Group helped to make her productive as she switched markets.
“I keep my production and the split is reasonable,” she says. “Premier Group is agent-centered; it’s all about making the members of the team profitable.”
Armstrong’s move to Chattanooga was actually a homecoming, as she was born in the city. Her father, builder and developer Jim Armstrong of Armstrong Real Estate, raised her on a farm located where Shallowford Road now serves as one of main arteries through the city.
The family eventually moved to Mahala Acres, a subdivision Armstrong’s father built. In a tribute that persists to this day, he named streets in the neighborhood after each of his children, including one he dubbed “Jane View Lane” after his daughter. (Armstrong has not sold any houses on the street, though she jokes she should knock on doors and introduce herself to its residents in person.)
Armstrong first dalliance with real estate occurred early in life as she answered the phone at her father’s office. However, instead of becoming a Realtor or developer, she earned a journalism degree at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, where she served as the first female sports editor of The Daily Beacon.
“I wrote a lot of stories about the women’s basketball team because they had horrible practice conditions,” Armstrong recalls. “I’d go into the sports director’s office and say, ‘What about women’s sports?’ and they’d say, ‘They don’t bring any money to the university.’ Of course, that’s changed.”
After college, Armstrong applied her writing skills as an advertising copywriter. Her only story from this era concerns her efforts to make sure others understood she did not create the slogan for one particular local retailer.
“One of the stores that was part of the chain I wrote for was Miller Brothers in Chattanooga. Someone wrote the slogan, ‘Miller’s has good clothes.’ I made it clear when I showed the ads I’d written during interviews that I did not write that one.”
Although Armstrong enjoyed being creative for a living, her romance with writing was short-lived and she became an oil and gas accountant after moving to Texas and earning a master’s degree in accounting and finance. This career later took her to Atlanta, where she served as a controller for a manufacturing company, and Kansas City, where she worked as a systems analyst for Sprint.
Armstrong became a Realtor after the death of her first husband because she was familiar with the profession and confident in her skills. She moved to Chattanooga for a brief time in the late 1900s and worked for Charlie Walldorf but eventually bounced back to Nevada. Her second husband’s illness brought her home again in 2020.
When Armstrong isn’t jetting back and forth between Nevada and Tennessee to serve her clients, she can be found relishing the local outdoors, contributing to the charity work of the Chattanooga Breakfast Rotary Club and participating in the activities of the Daughters of the American Revolution.
“I love being back in Chattanooga,” she says. “I pinch myself because I’m here.”
And whenever Armstrong can bend an ear, she tells people to make sure they’re prepared for the unexpected.
“Everyone needs to have a will or a trust,” Armstrong urges. “Young or old, it’s not an option if you want to take care of your loved ones.”