J.J. Curtis

J.J. Curtis

121 S Main St. Nevada, MO

Broker / Owner

John J. Curtis — J.J. to everybody in Nevada — is a broker and one of the owners of Curtis and Sons, the family firm that has been selling real estate in this town since 1948. He runs it with his father, Monte Curtis, and his brother, Andy Remington. The name on the door isn't a marketing decision.

He came into the business in 2001. Since then he has personally listed more than 600 properties and been on one side or the other of about 860 sales, roughly $94 million worth. In Nevada itself he has sold more homes than any other individual agent in nine separate years — 2015, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2025 and 2026 — and led the town in dollar volume in 2016 and in every year since 2017 but one.*

What's unusual is the range. Four out of five of his listings are houses, but the rest are farms and land, commercial buildings and rental property. If you're settling an estate with ground in it, selling a building on the square, or finally tired of managing that duplex, he has done it many times over — and he knows what those are worth, because he sold the ones that came before.

He also runs the auction side. Curtis & Sons has been selling at auction since 1952 — farms, estates, equipment, a whole property in a single day — and J.J. handles it from the sale bill to the last bid.

And he manages our rental and construction divisions. Beyond the brokerage, J.J. runs the property management side of the company — rentals and self-storage — and the construction side, and he holds a contractor's license himself. The crew that gets a house ready before it lists and the office that collects the rent after it sells both answer to him. So when you ask him whether a place will make a decent rental, or what it will take to make it sell, you're asking somebody who has collected the rent, fixed the furnace, and participated in 1031 exchanges — the property side of them, anyway; the tax questions belong to your accountant, and he'll tell you so. He's a licensed broker in Missouri.

Away from the office. J.J. is a pilot. He flies a 1974 Beechcraft Bonanza and is working through his instrument rating — and if you've ever watched somebody study approach plates at the kitchen table on a weeknight, that tells you most of what you need to know about how he goes at anything. He hunts and fishes when the season and the schedule agree.

Mostly, though, the best part of his life is at home. He'll tell you his wife, Betsy, is the best thing that ever happened to him, and he isn't being polite about it. Their son Miller would play soccer from sunup to sundown if somebody would just keep bringing him water.

* Heartland MLS closed sales, Nevada residential, 1999–2026. Listing-side count; does not include auction or private sales.