Columnist John Kass, a former Tribune opinion columnist who hosts the WGN Radio podcast “The Chicago Way,” has purchased a four-bedroom, 2,448-square-foot split-level house in St. John, Indiana.
As first reported by Streetsblog Chicago co-editor and Chicago Reader columnist John Greenfield, Kass and his wife bought the home in 2020 for $296,500. Kass, who previously had lived on the Northwest Side and before that in Western Springs, made the purchase through an opaque Indiana land trust.
St. John is approximately 37 miles southeast of downtown Chicago, in west-central Lake County.
Kass did not respond to a request for comment and the real estate agent who represented him and his wife in their purchase, Danielle Lenson, declined to comment on the transaction. However, numerous public records confirm that the couple bought and live in the St. John house, and that they no longer reside on Chicago’s Northwest Side.
In early 2020, Kass and his wife sold their home in Western Springs for $685,000. After that, they lived for a time in the first-floor unit of a Northwest Side three-flat — an experience that Kass wrote about in his columns.
In St. John, the split-level house they bought was constructed in 1979. It has 21/2 bathrooms, hardwood floors throughout on the main level, a family room with vaulted ceilings, a formal dining room and an eat-in kitchen with granite countertops. The house also has hardwood floors on the upper level, and it has a lower level with a brick fireplace with a glass door to an exterior patio space.
The Indiana house, which Kass and his wife bought for more than its $279,900 asking price, had a $2,796 property tax bill in the 2021 tax year. During his last year in Western Springs in 2019, Kass paid $16,432 in property taxes.
Bob Goldsborough is a freelance writer.
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