Tributes are flowing for legendary Brisbane agent Judi O’Dea.
One of Queensland’s most highly respected and deeply loved real estate agents, Judi O’Dea passed away over the weekend, leaving behind a community that is, quite simply, less colourful without her.
Everyone thought she was invincible. And in so many ways, she was. She was 70 years old, and at the peak of her powers, answering every call herself, working every weekend and selling beautiful homes in Brisbane’s inner west with the same passion and precision she had brought to the profession for nearly two decades.
Judi O’Dea came to real estate at 48 and made it her way.
Judi’s path to real estate was anything but conventional. After a long and vibrant career as a fashion industry icon and retailer, she found herself at a crossroads in her late forties. She had survived a stroke. Her business was creative but financially precarious. It would have been easy, perhaps even reasonable to scale back, to settle, to stop.
Instead, she sat on the back steps of her Paddington home and made herself a promise. “If I go to my grave and I waste these talents, I’ll never forgive myself.” That moment became a line in the sand.
At 48, she walked into the real estate industry with no training, no database, and no illusions about how hard it would be.
She had to learn, as she put it, “a whole new language.” But what she brought with her, an unshakeable belief in Brisbane’s inner-western suburbs, a gift for reading people, and an absolute refusal to be anything less than excellent, proved to be more than enough.
She would often say: “It’s never too late to be great.” She lived it.
Judi O’Dea was often referred to as the queen of real estate for her grace even under pressure.
Judi became an integral part of Ray White Paddington in 2019, declaring warmly upon joining that “yellow is my new colour” and in the years that followed, she became synonymous with the suburb itself.
She knew its streets, its character, its people. She knew which houses had history and which families had hopes.
A Ray White Chairman’s Elite Performer, she sold around 70 homes a year. The numbers were extraordinary. But the numbers were never the point.
Judi O’Dea said her secret to success was simple.
“You need iron-clad persistence and a great frock,” she was famous for saying.
Her advice to young agents was to always “work on the things that you know you are good at and find the right opportunity”.
Her advice to young agents was disarmingly simple: listen. “You’ve got two ears and one mouth, use them in that ratio.”
Judi O’Dea’s advice was often to listen more than talk: “You’ve got two ears and one mouth, use them in that ratio.”
At open homes, she would ask careful questions, build genuine connections, and let people tell her, in their own time, what they truly needed.
She understood that every property transaction was also a human one, shaped by grief, hope, divorce, new beginnings.
“You just have to have empathy with people,” she said. “They’ll tell you everything.”
She also believed in the irreplaceable power of a phone call. In an industry increasingly driven by text and automation, Judi was unapologetically old-school about this. “Tone tells you things text never will,” she said.
“Hesitation, urgency, uncertainty, you can’t read that in a message.”
She answered every call herself, right to the end.
Judi O’Dea, second from left, celebrated every sale with her signature “jump” with the sellers.
Judi and Michael celebrated every auction sale with their sellers with a signature “jump” at the signboard with the sold sticker. Judi was so proud of every transaction. There were so many celebration photos.
Judi was fond of saying that real estate is “a lonely, soul-wrenching occupation if you’re on your own.”
She made sure she was never alone. Drawing inspiration from what she had learned about Europe’s most successful property groups, she built her business around family and it flourished.
Her daughter Harriet Went joined the team in 2012 and became the operational backbone of the business. Beside Harriet stood Michael Kleinmeyer, Judi’s right hand for more than 21 years, who had followed her from the fashion industry into real estate. Together, they were more than a team.
They were proof that loyalty, properly nurtured, outlasts almost everything. Michael says he was convinced she was invincible.
“You are not an island,” she told anyone who would listen. “My team is so important, and Michael has been with me from the start.”
Judi O’Dea said a great team changes everything: “You are not an island”.
Judi understood, better than most, what it meant to reinvent yourself midlife. That understanding fuelled a deep commitment to supporting other women in the profession.
She worked closely with Ray White’s Leading Ladies network, championing women who were considering real estate as a second career, telling them what she had learned the hard way: that maturity is an asset, not a liability.
Her advice to young agents was always grounded and generous: work on your strengths, find the right opportunity, build your team, and never stop learning.
Judi O’Dea is survived by her beloved husband Patrick Went, her daughter Harriet and husband Dean and their son Felix and her son Eugene and his wife Tess.
She was loved by her family, revered by her colleagues, and trusted by the hundreds of families whose homes she helped sell with grace, warmth, and iron-clad professionalism.
There is no show without Judi. There never was.
Vale Judi O’Dea.
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