Love the setup, this is something I would like to do. As they say don’t put all your eggs in one basket. haha
I won’t say you can’t do that, but I’ve never seen it done.
I think I said before, if everywhere you want sensors, lights and switches has decent levels of 2.4 GHz WiFi, then just use WiFi devices. Keep it simple. Read up on ESPHome because most if not all of your devices will be running ESPHome. Athom sells WiFi devices with ESPHome already installed, but I generally flash my own binary firmware to save a few dollars per switch.
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It would still be battery operated, but you might be able to use a solar panel to avoid changing batteries all the times. There are several flood lights with solar panels and if they can drive a flood light, then I guess a motion sensor and an ESP device would be no problem. 
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I will always prefer cables.
WiFi might work now, but WiFi is easily affected by unexpected things, like rain or snow that lowers the signal or a car or truck parked in the wrong place, which then act as a shield against the WiFi signal.
In the winter the WiFi signal might be fine, but int he summer the trees get leafs and leafs contains liquid, which is the arc enemy of WiFi (or any RF signal for that matter).
You have the 5 RPi4, so I suggest you place on in each house and then use the last one for common controls.
There is an integration or addon called remote Home Assistant that allow to link up several instances of HA. Maybe it is possible to share the common HA with all the local HA that way.
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I have a property I manage with about 4 houses on it…. I will be setting this up for the home owners…. I will be treating it more as a commercial setup than some just DIY fun…. The home owners would be paying for all the stuff.
Just a reminder to not forget about the legal/ethical side of this project. I would think you’d need to have a formal, signed agreement with each homeowner about what the automation will do and not do, what camera images will be captured and/or stored, what they are required to do (if anything), what is your required response time (if any) if things go out, etc. Can a current or future homeowner “opt out” of any or all of the services?
Since you will be treating this as a commercial setup, review your plans and documents with a local lawyer well ahead of time, to protect both your homeowners and yourself.
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Thanks again for the reply. I’m living here for about a month now. The Wifi is pretty strong across the whole property. Some places could probably use another one of those UNI boosters or whatever its called for better signal.
I will checkout Athoms website and their products. Thanks for the link.
Since I live on the property right now, changing some batteries wouldn’t kill me unless I was doing it weekly haha. Good point on the solar panels to keep them sensors powered up, worth trying.
Totally with you on wired devices VS wireless. We used to run hundreds of feet of wires for sensors in my commercial days doing control work. Once a company came with a product line that used the electric wiring to communicate with all the controllers and do the automation. It was a total disaster because not every buildings wiring is in the best shape and controllers were getting stuck or lights not coming on lol, pure disaster.
We wasted so much time trying to get the devices to work that it would have been cheaper to just run comm wires between all the controllers than using the power lines =)
I like the idea of having the PI or mini server in each house. I would hard wire whatever I can. There is easy access in the attic and basement to run wires to different areas of the house.
2 of the 4 hours are just barns. There is no where for me to plug the CAT5 cable into the PI, there is only wifi there. Will I need to run the cable to these 2 barns so I can plug the PI into the network?
Thanks again for all your help. Right now I’m trying to figure out how to get the nest cameras they have on the property into the system. I even paid the $5 for the google api but for some reason it doesn’t want to connect to HA, i forgot the error. I will mess with it today.
Very good point. Right now all the houses are empty. This place is more of a bed and breakfast that hosts weddings but they don’t do that now. I also prefer my privacy and don’t want cameras everywhere or sound recordings… This is more of lights, leak detection, controlling heating/cooling/monitoring alarms etc…
The cameras I’m just looking to point into the direction of the driveway entrances and the general area but no cameras indoors or pointing to every section of the house.
A RPi 4 usually have WiFi also. I think all version 4s have WiFi.