Pioneering Brisbane businesswoman hangs up her hat

AFTER nearly half a century selling property, Durack’s Nanette Lilley is selling up and looking forward to her next challenge.

Real estate agent Nanette Lilley is retiring after 45 years in the business. Picture: AAP/Regi Varghese

AFTER nearly half a century selling property, Durack’s Nanette Lilley is selling up and looking forward to her next challenge.

Mrs Lilley was one of the first female estate agents in Brisbane when she started out 45 years ago.

And when she opened the now famed Nanette Lilley Property in Graceville 36 years ago she blazed a new trail for the industry’s women.

“I got the idea when I went to a conference in Hawaii in 1971. There were so many women who owned their own business, they didn’t just sell,’’ she said.

For a woman who built her career on honesty and good service, it is ironic her original motivation came from a bad salesman.

“One day I went out with my husband to look at some land at Camira and I didn’t think the salesperson who showed us was particularly good, so I said to myself: ‘I can do that better’,” she said.

And she could. After working at several firms she moved into the CBD before opening an office at Graceville in 1982 with one typewriter and one phone.

The part-time author also penned Welcome to Laurel Avenue, which went on to become a classic.

She intends to spend her “retirement’’ working on charitable causes and finishing her second book.

While her office on Honour Ave will be redeveloped, and the business has been sold to Ray White, her name will live on in her grandson Charles Lilley, an agent with Ray White Sherwood.