Challenge Accepted: Spotlight on Las Vegas Agent, Adaptive Athlete Andrew Montgomery

For clients who don’t already know Andrew Montgomery —or don’t know about him—there inevitably comes the moment when they learn the extraordinary story the Las Vegas-based real estate agent has to tell. “A lot times, after we’ve closed the deal, they’ll say, ‘By the way, I see you have a handicap placard, and we’ve been parking in handicap spots. What’s the deal?’” said Montgomery, who goes by AJ. “When I tell them that I’m an amputee, and they say, ‘You’ve literally shown us 70 homes, and all the stairs we climbed? I had no idea!’—there’s a certain pride I take in that.” The fact that people are shocked to learn he wears a prosthetic below his left knee isn’t just a flattering acknowledgement of his physical grit and agility. For Montgomery, those moments reaffirm the tremendous personal fortitude and empathy he has gained from his experience as an amputee and highlight how much they shape his work as an agent. “Apart from caring about people and being understanding of their situations,” he said, “I think what makes a great agent is the ability to look at things creatively and find atypical solutions to atypical problems.” To be sure, adaptability and fierce determination in the face of challenges are traits Montgomery possessed long before the 2015 traffic accident that led to the loss of his foot. A proud native of Minden, Nebraska, a two-stoplight town where he graduated high school in a class of 55, he initially planned to study architecture when he realized what he truly wanted to do was to be an actor. And unlike so many other Middle American dreamers who head west in search of stardom, he actually made a go of it. “I was able to survive and live in Los Angeles for 10 years,” he said, juggling the requisite bartending jobs with acting work, including stints as a stilt walker at Universal Studios and Disney parks in Anaheim and Hong Kong, several print and commercial ads, and the lead in the “ultra-low budget” film Primal Rage . On a visit to Las Vegas during that time, Montgomery happened to catch a performance of Le Rêve , an electrifying aerial, aquatic and acrobatic show in residency at the Wynn casino and resort. The circular stage set featured a 1.1-million-gallon pool into which performers would dive from great heights and never resurface. Though he’d never trained as an acrobat beyond practicing backflips in the wrestling room at high school, his ease with walking on stilts and years spent as a self-described “gym rat” helped him develop the skills and, eventually, the courage to audition for the show. Four days after learning he had made it to the final round, Montgomery was struck by a car while riding his motorcycle home from work. After two and a half weeks in the hospital and three surgeries, his doctors presented him with a choice: he could endure another 10 to 12 debilitating surgeries over the next five to six years in hopes of keeping a foot that would likely need to be fused together, or he could opt for amputation. “It probably took me about 10 seconds,” he recalled. “I said, ‘Great—let’s amputate.” Although his athleticism and experience on stilts enabled him to adapt quickly to the prosthetic, Montgomery initially struggled to envision his life as an amputee. That all changed when the casting agent for Le Rêve called and invited him to attend a performance. He was greeted backstage by the entire cast and told that if he was able to match what he had demonstrated in his auditions, he would be welcome to join the show. Driven by a new sense of purpose, Montgomery trained over the next eight months, successfully re-auditioned and relocated to Las Vegas. Over the next four years, he performed with the aid of multiple prosthetics, each customized for the various athletic demands of the show. While performing at nights, he began to explore his longstanding interest in residential real estate and started out as an agent at Keller Williams. When the pandemic shut the show down, Montgomery turned to reassessing what he wanted out of a career in real estate and what kind of brokerage would help him achieve it. He found the answer after striking up a friendship with fellow agent Avi Dan-Goor and learning about the business he was building since joining Douglas Elliman in 2022. “We had this running joke where he would ask me when I was going to get back into real estate, and I’d tell him, ‘Only if I can join your team,’” he said. “When we finally sat down and had a couple of meetings, I began to see what Douglas Elliman was about, as a brokerage and a brand. I love the feel of luxury it projects, the professionalism, the simple elegance of the branding. I knew this was what I wanted to focus on and where I want to take my career.” Since joining the team in 2023, Montgomery has approached his work as an agent with the same intense focus and dedication to excellence that has driven his success as an adaptive athlete and performer. “The phrase ‘top-producing agent’ gets thrown around a lot, and it doesn’t really mean much,” he said. “It’s not just about selling real estate. It’s about the relationships you develop with people when you’re helping them to sell their largest asset. For me and Avi and, of course, Douglas Elliman, it comes down to the level of professionalism and the experience we provide in the course of doing a transaction. I am always trying to top myself and challenge myself to communicate better, to develop systems that are even better than they already are. As a team, we try to change the way that people do real estate and set a new bar for everybody else to reach for.” It’s an ethos that effectively serves as Montgomery’s sales pitch in a growing market with no shortage of agents. And as one the many LA transplants who continue to migrate to Las Vegas, he can offer considerable personal experience and insight on all that Southern Nevada has to offer. “Mount Charleston is literally only 45 minutes away, so I like to go snowboarding and get my legs wet,” he said. He hasn’t left show business behind, however: In the evenings, he serves as a production manager for Absinthe , an “adult cabaret circus show” staged outside of Caesar’s Palace on the Strip. (“When I say adult,” he added, “I mean it is crude, it is inappropriate and it is very 18-and-over.”) As if that isn’t enough to fill up his days, Montgomery, a longtime woodworker and furniture maker, is deep into a home renovation with his fiancé (whose proposal video , by the way, is legendary and currently has 881,400+ likes and nearly 12 million views and plays on Instagram alone). And he frequently travels to speak about his experience and provide support and motivation for fellow amputees. “I try to help them realize that being an amputee is not a death sentence, that you can still do incredible things even as an amputee,” he said. When asked if there is anything he can’t do as an adaptive athlete, Montgomery paused to think. “Not yet,” he said. “I have performed as an acrobat in one of the world’s best shows, I’ve surfed in Costa Rica, I’ve skied on the lake, I’ve traveled the world and done all kinds of hiking. There are always going to be challenges in life, and the world is a vast place. But no matter what the challenge is, your outlook is what’s going to help you get through it. I am always evolving and trying to challenge myself—and I have never met a challenge that I cannot overcome.”