Prague, July 13 (CTK) - Well-off Czechs seeks a second home in Austria, France, Italy, Switzerland or Florida, and they are ready to pay much more for design apartments abroad than at home, the commercial supplement to daily Hospodarske noviny (HN) writes toady.

It says Czechs are also interested in mountain chalets close to downhill courses.

"We were surprised at the growing number of questions from Czechs, therefore we have extended our sales to the Czech market," HN quotes Robert Hermandinger, secretary of Falkesteiner Gruppe Hermandinger, as saying.

The firm offers furnished apartments in the Carinthian Alps for 250,000 euros, which is an equivalent of more than six million crowns, HN writes.

HN says Czechs can get back 20 percent of the price in VAT, which decreases the final prices by 50,000 euros.

The average pay in the Czech Republic was 23,144 crowns in the first quarter of the year.

Unlike other foreigners, Czechs buy villas, luxury flats and mountain chalets almost exclusively for their own needs and they do not consider letting them during their absence, HN writes.

It quotes Jitka Dankova, from the Prague branch of Sotheby's International Realty, as saying that Czech clients of the firm are interested in properties in skiing centers in the Swiss and Italian Alps in winter and in Swiss or Italian lakes in summer.

"Some destinations are within relatively comfortable reach by car and can be used as weekend homes," Dankova said.

She said "winter" clients often show interest in ski-in, ski-out chalets where the slope is literally on their doorstep.

Real estate agents say investment in such properties pays because their prices will probably grow up as the trend in the Alps is towards reducing the construction of new chalets, HN writes.

Czechs interested in recreation properties abroad are medium- and higher-level managers and businesspeople, HN writes.

They are people who have been going for many years to the same place in Sardinia, Spain or Tuscany and who want to buy a smaller farm there, the paper writes.

Dankova told HN that her firm had a client who wanted to buy the Santa Cristina island off Venice with a 20 million euros price tag, but he did not eventually buy it.

The client praised the island's good accessibility from Marco Polo airport in Venice, but objected to that it is not completely isolated, HN quotes Dankova as saying.

($1=17.346 crowns)