Nick Scali boss Anthony Scali buys $9m Palm Beach weekender, making it three in the street

Anthony Scali, the managing director of furniture retail giant Nick Scali, has bought a waterfront Palm Beach weekender for $9 million, making it his third family holding on the waterfront of prized Iluka Road.

The Scali family first emerged on the street’s property paper trail in late 2013 when his son Elliot bought the Walter Barda-designed residence on Snapperman Beach for $7.5 million from property developer Denis O’Neil, adding O’Neil’s boathouse and adjoining beachfront block six months later for $4.43 million.

Settlement records show Scali senior’s latest purchase is the long-held house of miner James Mitchell, who before he died in 2015 had owned the house since 1977, paying $72,500 with a mortgage to the late rugby league player “Albie” McAndrew.

The purchase comes after a protracted settlement that exchanged late last year, months before the COVID-19 pandemic and ensuing economic shutdown saw the Nick Scali share price tumble in late March to just $3.

The furniture retailer has weathered the economic upheaval of recent months better than expected, despite delays in furniture lines arriving from China, with the share price rallying in recent months to $6.75 this week, just above where it was at the start of the year.

Houses on the waterfront side of Iluka Road are hotly contested among luxury weekender shoppers because they offer the only true waterfront or beachfront real estate in Palm Beach. Few are as prized as the waterfront offerings set on the westernmost foreshore privately set away from Snapperman Beach.

Ray White Palm Beach Prestige’s Noel Nicholson declined to comment on the deal, but was known to be shopping the Mitchell family’s property to buyers before it sold.

Goldman Sachs managing director Zac Fletcher bought the house next door a year ago for $10.35 million, ending 62 years of Esdaile family ownership since they bought it from the late hotelier Vincent Toohey.

Among Scali’s nearest neighbours is Uncle Toby’s founder Doug Shears, who bought Anakela for $15 million in 2007 from the late grocery tycoon Jim Fleming, and Sydney University chancellor Belinda Hutchinson, who bought for $7.8 million in 2009, and restaurateur John Szangolies, who paid $9.2 million in 2016.

The Palm Beach record was set earlier this year at $24 million when investment banker Mike Messara bought the weekender of Caroline Jumpertz, the daughter of the late media legend Sam Chisholm.