Steps to go about buying a server?

Here is my situation. I am a web developer and over the past several years I have developed nearly 30 web sites. Currently, I have some outfit in Iowa of all places that hosts my sites for me. I pay them $5 a month per site and turn around and charge my clients $20. I am curious to know how involved and expensive it would be to just "buy" a server and put it somewhere where I could access it remotely. I am in Budapest Hungary. If there are alternatives, please let me know as well. I would need to just do basic things, such as email accounts, DNS info, permissions, and occasionally the install of 3rd party applications. Any feedback would be helpful. Also, if this is not the proper forum, please redirect me to the most appropriate one. Thanks!

There are some websites devoted to helping you run your own server.

Generally if you want decent response you'll have a hard time affording the bandwidth you'll need on your Internet connection if your sites have any normal activity.

You will need to decide what kind of server, what server software (windows, *nix, other), and what server apps you want to support, and you'll need to stay on top of all security patches.