You know, that special place you can kick back with a nostalgic glimmer in your eye. Your parents might live nearby .... and the stress levels seem to diminish when you enter your own little world.

At least this is my personal experience with that place I call home. In my case it was a farm near a small rural town. I actually didn't know what a great place it was for a very long time. There's an expression we use in the country "You don't miss the water till the well runs dry". It's a metaphor we can apply to a lot of things. In this case home. Most people I think miss home when they leave it and experience loneliness in the harsh cruel confusing world perhaps for the first time.

I spent the first 20 or so years of my life on the farm, but how can we know any place is home until we venture out and experience other places? So this is what I did. Although I've traveled a fair bit and seen much of the world, I was also lucky enough to have a good job that kept me within a few miles of the farm. I came to the conclusion that I had a particularly good home arrangement. The one in which I actually lived and then the one I could return to any time within a few minutes for a family visit. For me that place is Iroquois Ontario.

Have you checked out the current Ontario properties for sale? How can people afford to raise a family, drive a car, buy an average $300,000 house in the city, pay the huge property taxes ... and still be able to live a bit, on an average family income of $65k or so?

Over the years I have browsed quite a few Ontario properties that were for sale. Now, I'm not going to lie; just like any other state or province, there are areas that will cost you a fortune and those that run at more reasonable and affordable rates.

For example, the rural towns outside a 30 mile radius of Ottawa aren't too pricey by most people's standards, whereas downtown Ottawa, Montreal, or Toronto will cost you a mint. Where is your desired place to live?

Do you prefer the more secluded country life, or the chaos and amenities of downtown? This is a key factor to consider when purchasing or building a home. Especially your last home. When you are sorting through those Ontario houses for sale are you thinking in terms of a final purchase? That single home or property that you plan to keep forever, and raise your children or perhaps retire in ... because you've finally figured out where home actually is.

Many things come into play here. Is the area safe? Does it have quality education available? What health services are there? Is it going to increase in value? That one is always a concern for home buyers. We all want to find a nice home that's going to increase in value. Obviously by reducing your costs when you buy, you also are reducing potential losses if heaven forbid, property values actually drop some day. In the high cost energy future many predict, suburban housing prices will suffer as the high cost of transportation takes a bigger and bigger bite of income and forces people to move to lower cost environments. Smaller more self supporting towns where food can be grown locally and the need to travel reduced seem the most likely to benefit from rising property values due to both the migration of people and jobs.

Are you currently searching for Ontario properties for sale? If this is right up your ally, then you may want to resort to the absolute best source of all time. It's probably sitting in your office, kitchen, or bedroom. I'm talking about your PC or Mac. You probably have a home computer with Internet access. So jump online and do a search for "Ontario houses for sale", "Ontario property for sale" , "Ontario farm for sale" etc, depending on whatever you are looking for .

The new google database linkup of its Google Maps service with real estate property for sale is now being beta tested. This is an interesting setup as it promises a linkage will occur between it and brokers using MLS listings. It may be kinda messy at first determining exactly what's available because many MLS properties are likely to get listed multiple times on Google this way. Google.com will provide all kinds of results but be aware you will have to choose your keyword searches carefully.

An easier search will occur if you include "for sale by owner" or "fsbo" in your search words. Using Google this way, you are likely to find a lot of for sale by owner (FSBO) properties and avoid most of the MLS stuff. You can generally buy cheaper this way because the seller isn't using a realtor and can therefore pass the commission fee savings onto the buyer. The buyer however still needs to pay a lawyer to represent his/her interests and to tidy up the paper work. Good way to buy a home in my opinion ... provided you can find the right property and seller.

Quite often the FSBO seller will put a very good website together to display the property because without a realtor he has to do his own marketing. I've also found that the pictures and descriptions provided on a FSBO site are generally a lot better than what a realtor would provide for the same property. This is just one advantage of doing a good computer search to locate potential buys.

I've included a link in the resource box below for a FSBO site selling a farm. It's a good example to compare with what you'll will find on a realtor's site or MLS listings. Keep looking for good FSBO sites like this one. If you do your homework, you can get a very good deal this way.

Here's to good home and property hunting on your computer.