Short story: Wife and I are looking for retirement places.

Long story:

My wife and I are on the lookout for 15+ acres to purchase and build a small home on to retire to. In the short term it would be used as a recreational spot for us. We currently live in Northern Ohio approximately 1 hour South of Detroit. We have traveled many times with out camper to Kentucky. We have enjoyed ourselves immensely. We like the Mammoth Cave region quite a bit and the areas East of there. (No experience with heading West of Bowling Green).

We would like to build a smaller sized home and have room for a small hobby farm or the ability to raise chickens and possibly cows and pigs. We would also like to have a portion of the property to be wooded. Hopefully something removed from large cities, but still manageable to get to a Walmart, Tractor Supply or Dollar General within a 20-30 min drive.

Please enlighten an out of towner on the pros & cons of your state and what areas you would think matches what we're looking for.

We have considered Tennessee as well as Alabama in our search, but feel that land in Kentucky would be perfect as it allows us to utilize it on the weekends without to big of a drive until we become full time residents.

Thanks in advance for all responses.

My wife and I are looking for exactly the same thing, with privacy in mind, but fairly good accessibility to the same types of stores.

Keep in mind 15 acres in the areas I'll recommend might have 2 that are 'flat' and the rest is a hill.

You could be searching in Mount Olivet, Cynthiana, Irvine, Carlisle, Owenton, Sadieville, or Stamping Ground.

I've gone to Lawrenceburg and Willisburg to look at property as well.

You'll find listings that are $50k for 18 acres, and others that are $80k for 8.

It all depends on what the seller thinks they can get, and sometimes the listings will be up for 3-4 days before going under contract.  Sometimes the listing will not have actual photographs of the property, but will have a satellite view, and when you drive by it, you'll see a hill instead of flat land.

Barns may or may not be part of the deal as well.

Snipped your response..

You seem to have seen the same types of properties I've found so far.  We don't mind hills, or even clearing some but enough acerage to build a home and potentially some out buildings without being on a severe hill/ mountain is preferred. I've been watching Brad Simmons on YouTube and he seems to list lots of properties that are what we're looking for but obviously some are years old and the newer listings are locked up before I get a chance to actually walk the property. They say that they sell so fast to "out of staters" (like me) site unseen. I don't ever think I could buy land without at least once walking it and having a brief period to research the listing.

My wife and I have gone on about 10 drive-byes and walked a few in the last year.

Some have been really nice with incredible views and for some reason, they were up for a year or two before being purchased.

Lately the breaking point seems to be $70-$75,000 that go "pending" on realtor.com in a week, and the ones that are $80-$120k take a bit longer.

I'm exhibiting a lot of patience in this process because I want to only do this once.  My wife and I are in our early 40s so proceeding wisely is the first step.

I'm between Somerset and Glasgow. 2.5 to 3 hours to Lex, Louisville, or Nashville. It is a pretty nice rural area, the people are for the most part friendly and helpful. Crime is mostly drug related and theft, not so much "violent" crime but some usually domestic.
  As said, you need to walk any property you are interested in. When my wife and I looked at a nice listing, there was no mention about the several hundred tires piled in the woods, another listing had no mention of the gas pipeline running thru it. It is really 'quaint' to have a creek between the house and the road, until you are stuck for days waiting for the creek to recede.
This area has some flat, some rolling hills, some areas that a mountain goat would balk at. If you haven't done it yet, surf the internet and find a list of properties that seem to meet your needs, find some local realtors and schedule a trip. You will find more listings as you are looking around the area(For sale by owner, auction, and word of mouth).

  If you have a good income without working locally, you may be OK in this area, If you need to have a good paying job to live and pay bills, It may be a hard area to live in. The wages here are not really that good, and I assume that you don't really want to live a scratch existence.

  My experience is a piece of property with a decent house already built on it, is cheaper than a bare piece of property and build a house, put in septic, etc. is cheaper. but others may have different experiences.

IM me if you want.

Sounds pretty similar to my situation, but very late 30's..

This is definitely an area I have circled on the map. Very pretty area.

We scored on 25 acres in Rockcastle county last fall with a 2500+sqft home, two barns, a garage and three pastures for under $250k. Over half ours is wooded, on a hill and we can only see two neighbors (who are awesome people) and so far its a nice quiet area. We can be in Lexington in a hour, have a half dozen walmarts/tractor supplies within 30 miles and far enough to keep us out of trouble.

Wow! That sounds like a nice place.

Pretty similar to what we're looking for. I'll have to do some property searches in that general area.

Last summer my wife and I bought 105 acres between Sadieville and Corinth, we're working on building a house on that land now. I know another guy mentioned Sadieville and some of the surrounding areas, and I agree they sound like what you're looking for. We're close enough to both Lexington and Cinci that it's not hard to get "city" stuff and there's also Georgetown, Williamstown, and Dry Ridge even closer that will have Walmarts and stores like that. Our property is only 7 minutes off I75, but it feels like we're way away from everything and our neighbors are mostly farmers with active farms. As has been mentioned, land in this area will be hilly but that's not a problem if you want some livestock, and you'll probably have some flat ground for small scale agriculture.

Check out Casey, Russell, Adair, Boyle and Pulaski County. I bought 12 acres 14 years ago and I'm about to make the move to full time permeant resident since retirement.

I will. It amazes me how fast some of these properties are moving! I saw one the other day, perfect. Called to set up a viewing, on market for 12 hours and there was already an offer and under contract!

Hey neighbor.

As M_G mentioned, there is a lot to be had just off I-75 north of Georgetown, that will let you be "remote" but still 30 +/- minutes to real amenities.