Vale Judi O’Dea: Tributes flow for legendary Queensland agent – realestate.com.au

Judi O’Dea, one of Queensland’s most respected and loved real estate agents, passed away this weekend, leaving behind a community that is simply less colorful without her.

Everyone thought she was invincible. And in many ways she was. She was seventy years old and at the height of her powers. She answered every call herself, worked every weekend and sold beautiful homes in Brisbane’s west with the same passion and precision that she had brought to the business for almost twenty years.

Judi O’Dea entered the real estate business at the age of 48 and found it her way.

---

Judi’s path to real estate was anything but conventional. After a long and vibrant career as an icon and retailer in the fashion industry, she found herself at a crossroads in her late 40s. She had survived a stroke. Her business was creative but financially precarious. It would have been easy and maybe even reasonable to scale back, calm down and quit.

Instead, she sat on the back steps of her Paddington home and made a promise to herself. “If I go to my grave and waste these talents, I will never forgive myself.” That moment became a line in the sand.

At the age of 48, she entered the real estate industry with no training, no database and no illusions about how difficult it would be.

She had to learn, as she put it, “a whole new language.” But what she brought with her, an unwavering belief in Brisbane’s inner-west suburbs, a gift for reading people and an absolute refusal to be anything less than excellent, proved more than enough.

She often said, “It’s never too late to be great.” She lived it.

Judi O’Dea was often called the queen of real estate because of her grace even under pressure.

---

Judi became an integral part of Ray White Paddington in 2019, warmly declaring upon joining that “yellow is my new color” and in the years that followed she became synonymous with the suburb itself.

She knew the streets, the character, the people. She knew which houses had history and which families had hope.

She was a Ray White Chairman’s Elite Performer and sold approximately 70 homes per year. The numbers were extraordinary. But the numbers were never the point.

Judi O’Dea said her secret to success was simple.

“You need rock-solid perseverance and a great dress,” was her famous statement.

Her advice to young agents was to always “work on the things you know you are good at and find the right opportunities.”

Her advice to young officers was disarmingly simple: listen. “You have two ears and one mouth, use them in that proportion.”

Judi O’Dea’s advice was often to listen more than talk: “You have two ears and one mouth, use them in that proportion.”

---

At open houses, she asked careful questions, built real connections, and let people tell her what they really needed on their own time.

She understood that every real estate transaction was also a human transaction, shaped by grief, hope, divorce and new beginnings.

“You just have to have empathy with people,” she said. “They will 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 unashamedly old-fashioned about this. “Tone tells you things that text will never tell you,” she said.

“Hesitation, urgency, uncertainty, you don’t read that in a message.”

She answered every call herself, until the end.

Judi O’Dea, second from left, celebrated each sale with her signature “jump” with the vendors.

---

Judi and Michael celebrated each auction sale with their sellers with a signature “jump” to the sign with the sold sticker. Judi was so proud of every transaction. There were so many party photos.

Judi liked to say that real estate is “a lonely, heartbreaking business when you’re on your own.”

She made sure she was never alone. Inspired by what she had learned about Europe’s most successful real estate groups, she built her business around family, and it thrived.

Her daughter Harriet Went joined the team in 2012 and became the operational backbone of the company. Next to Harriet stood Michael Kleinmeyer, Judi’s right-hand man for over 21 years, who had followed her from the fashion industry to real estate. Together they were more than a team.

They were proof that loyalty, properly nurtured, survives almost anything. Michael says he was convinced she was invincible.

“You are not an island,” she said to anyone who would listen. “My team is so important and Michael has been with me from the beginning.”

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 mid-life. That insight led to a deep commitment to supporting other women in the profession.

Working closely with Ray White’s Leading Ladies network, she advocated for 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 sound 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 rock-solid professionalism.

There is no show without Judi. There never was.

Vale Judi O’Dea.