A home can be the starting place where great leaders learn to be great. It's here, where our families, communities and neighborhoods shape who we become. Today as a nation, we observe and honor the accomplishments and life of Martin Luther King Jr. To best understand who he was, I tracked down his birth home, which helped shape his journey to becoming one of the country's most influential leaders.

The Atlanta Connection

On Jan. 15, 1929 Michael (later changed to Martin) Luther King Jr. was born upstairs in a two-story, Queen Anne-style home at 501 Auburn Ave. in Atlanta. Preserved as a historical landmark, King's birth home can only be visited with a park ranger-led tour. The home was constructed in 1895, and was purchased in 1909 by King's maternal grandfather, Reverend Adam Daniel (A.D.) Williams for $3,500. When King's father married Alberta Williams, the family moved into the house in 1926. The first level includes a front porch, parlor, study, dining room, kitchen, laundry, bedroom and bathroom. The second level includes four bedrooms and one bathroom.

According to the Martin Luther King Jr. National Historic site, the civil rights leader resided in the home with his parents, two siblings, grandmother and Aunt Ida. It has been written that King, who had a special bond with his Grandmother Williams, spent many of his days sitting in the kitchen listening to her stories and sampling her rich cooking. He shared a room on the second floor with his younger brother Alfred Daniel. With an affinity for reading, the boys' rooms were always full of books. At the end of each day, King's grandmother and mother would read to the children. Because the women often selected passages from The Book of Knowledge, the children learned about faraway places and people, different ideas, and the world outside Georgia. King, who skipped high school, enrolled in Morehouse College in Atlanta when he was only 15 years old.

It takes a village

Segregation during that period made it difficult for African-Americans to get public accommodations like hotels, so the King household was always busy entertaining friends and family. The children often slept in the hallways to allow guests to use their rooms.

Everyone, including the children, were expected to pull their weight in the home and chores were strictly enforced. It was believed that King's favorite chore was stocking the basement furnace with coal he collected from a shed in their backyard.

In his autobiography, Martin Luther King Sr. said: 'When the boys began earning a little money through neighborhood odd jobs, Mother promoted a very simple plan for them. They were to consider the division into three parts of all the money their jobs or allowances brought them. Mother called these divisions 'The King Home's Three S's: Spending, Saving, and Sharing.'

For decades, many of the Queen Anne homes that line Auburn Avenue had deteriorated to burned-out shells, and had become shelters to vagrants and drug users. But thanks to a $10 million renovation project spearheaded by the King family and undertaken by the park service nine years ago, today nearly all of the single-family homes, duplexes and shotgun houses on the block — dating back to the turn of century— boast restored wooden porches and fresh coats of buttercream yellow, baby blue or burgundy paint.

While King's birth home remains mostly untouched, encapsulated in time for visitors to relish, the world around it has been changed forever.

Get a tour of King's historic home at nps.gov.

For $4.25 million you can live in a piece of history. While it may not tout the opulence and grandeur of the White House, John F. Kennedy's former Federal style home in Georgetown, Washington D.C., is the ideal abode for a prestigious dignitary. Built in the 19th century, the rustic red brick façade, spiraling staircase, built-in bookshelves and dark wood floors give this home a sense of antiquity. If you're looking for a sleek modern look, step into the kitchen, which boasts state-of-the-art stainless steel appliances and black granite counter tops.

The four-story home includes three bedrooms, and two full-size and three half bathrooms. The skylit master bedroom suite on the top floor has a wet bar, access to the rooftop deck and an exquisite marble bath overlooking the tree lined street. Kennedy lived in the home from 1949 to 1951 with his younger sister Eunice, who's the founder of the Special Olympics. Who would of known at the time that the young, ambitious Kennedy would eventually upgrade his digs to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. NW.

Do you live near the home of a former or current dignitary?

While the old adage says, 'Don't judge a book by its cover,' I say you can definitely judge a politician by his home. From a sprawling North Carolina mansion to a ritzy nine-bedroom co-op on Manhattan's Upper East Side, front-runners of the 2008 presidential election aren't living so shabbily. Last week I ran across a Newsweek article that lifted the curtains of some of the candidates' homes. 

Barack Obama dwells in a historic, $1.65 million Georgian-revival home on Chicago's South Side with his wife, Michelle, and their two daughters. Homes in the Kenwood area, which is recognized as a landmark district, sell for $328,000 on average.

John Edwards's 28,000 square-feet North Carolina home lies in the middle of a 102-acre estate and is valued at more than $6 million. With its indoor recreation area, which includes a swimming pool and basketball and squash courts, it's considered to be one of the most valuable homes in Orange County, N.C. The average home in the area is going for $366,000.

While it's hard to beat crashing at the White House, Hillary and Bill Clinton's five-bedroom Dutch Colonial is located in Chappaqua, an upscale suburb of New York City. Nationwide, Chappaqua ranks 42nd among the 100 highest-income places in the United States. The Clintons purchased the home toward the end of Bill's presidency in 1999 for $1.7 million. Homes in their neighborhood are up for sale at $2 million or more. When Hillary's back in D.C., she finds coziness on Embassy Row in her other five-bedroom Colonial, valued at $2.85 million. 

Rudy Giuliani isn't reserved about spending his dough. About five years ago the former New York mayor and his first wife, Judith, paid $5.25 million for a nine-room, prewar co-op on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. Average homes in this swank enclave are going for about $1.5 million. And let's not forget about his $3 million summer getaway in the Hamptons.

Multimillionaire Mitt Romney doesn't like to settle down in just one place. The former Massachusetts governor and CEO owns a ski lodge near Park City, Utah, and a $10 million estate in rural New Hampshire. His primary residence, though, is in Belmont, the Boston suburb where the average home is valued at $681,000. At $1.8 million, Romney's six-bedroom Colonial is worth three times the homes in the area.                                                                  

Mike Huckabee may be a Republican underdog, but his recent surge in popularity says you don't always have to be the richest kid on the block to win votes. Huckabee and his family sold their lake house last year and moved into an upscale Shady Valley neighborhood of North Little Rock, Ark. Their modest five-bedroom home is valued at $540,200 — the most affordable of all the leading candidates' homes.

Check out HomeGain's Home Valuation tool to search for estimated home prices throughout the country.

What do you think these presidential candidates' homes say about them? Whose pad would you like to crash?