I am curious if any of you have noticed a difference in the rank of a page that is hosted by yourself at home? To me it seems that this shouldn't make a difference but I'm just wondering if it has any effect at all.
I think things like server response time, and ip range could have a small affect, but overall, probably not.
No. But some hosts have high PR and list of their costumers websites - it may help you, but not so much.
So if I can just buy good backlinks I can never ever put content on the page and get good PR? I suppose you still aren't going to get SERP results without content. PR isn't king.
Having a hosting package or a single dedicated server with many sites on it that are linked to each other, can greatly hurt the PR passed. I think Matt Cutts even talked about a guy getting his 2000 sites from a single server get completed kicked out of google's index.
PR has nothing to do with your hosting company or location. However, your site location is a factor in determining its rank in the index.