ownCloud is a very good self hosted solution to host all your contacts, photos, documents etc. Now, ownCloud does provide its own file sync application, but I believe using BitTorrent Sync is much better solution to keep your files in sync between your local machine and your ownCloud installation.
This post won’t cover installation of ownCloud, or BitTorrent Sync (see my post here for BTSync setup) and shouldn’t take more than 5 minutes!