Murder-Suicide Home in SF's Westwood Highlands Lists for $1.5M
A San Francisco home where a family of four died in a murder-suicide is now listed at $1,499,950. Will buyers compete for the stigmatized property?
This assignment sits at the uncomfortable intersection of real estate and tragedy, but the housing market doesn’t pause for grief.
A three-bedroom, two-bath home at 930 Monterey Boulevard in San Francisco’s Westwood Highlands neighborhood hit the market last week at $1,499,950. The listing, held by Mary Lou Castellanos at Sotheby’s, identifies the property as a foreclosure sale. What the listing doesn’t lead with, but what any prospective buyer doing basic research will quickly find, is that investigators believe this is where Paula Truong, 53, shot her husband Thomas “TR” Ocheltree, 57, and their two daughters, Alexandra, 12, and Mackenzie, 9, in their beds last October before hanging herself in the garage.
The family had been under severe financial pressure. Truong and Ocheltree were local entrepreneurs whose businesses, including multiple coffeeshops and an upscale liquor store in the area, had failed. Mounting debt appears to have followed them into that house on Monterey Boulevard.
The property’s ownership history is tangled. The couple originally purchased the home in 2014 for $1.35 million. Zillow records previously showed a sale for $2.05 million in November 2024, suggesting a foreclosure action may have already been underway before the killings last fall, though it’s unclear whether the family was leasing the home back from a bank or another owner at the time of the tragedy. The Realtor.com listing no longer reflects that 2024 transaction.
The ask of roughly $1.5 million signals something real estate agents refer to as a stigmatized property discount. Given how much San Francisco single-family home prices have climbed over the past decade-plus, a listing at $1.5 million in this neighborhood carries an implicit acknowledgment of the home’s history. The 1924-built house features hardwood floors, an updated kitchen, bay windows in both a breakfast nook and a living room, a formal dining room, and a backyard with a patio. Under normal circumstances, that package would likely carry a higher price tag in this market.
But San Francisco’s housing demand is stubborn. Bidding wars on single-family homes remain common even in 2026, and the discount built into this asking price may attract buyers who see an opportunity rather than a reason to walk away.
An open house last Sunday drew prospective buyers who had a range of reactions to the property’s history. Sejal Kotak, a 34-year-old Mountain View resident looking to move her family into the city, told a local publication that the history might simply be a negotiating point. She added that she and her family don’t believe in ghosts.
That pragmatic attitude isn’t universal, and it shouldn’t be minimized. Stigmatized properties carry legal disclosure requirements in California. Sellers must disclose a death on the property if it occurred within three years. This one did. Buyers have the right to know, and they’re getting it, however uncomfortable the conversation.
What happens at the next open house, scheduled for Tuesday, March 24 at 1 p.m., and through the subsequent offer process, will tell us something about where San Francisco buyers actually draw their personal lines. The city’s housing scarcity has a way of recalibrating those lines over time. A home that might sit for months in a softer market could, here, attract multiple offers.
The more important story under all of this is one that doesn’t have a clean resolution. A family collapsed under financial strain in a way that ended four lives. The businesses failed, the debts accumulated, and nobody intervened in time. The house will sell. Someone will move in, repaint, make it theirs. That’s how real estate works. But the circumstances that led to October’s tragedy deserve more sustained attention than a listing price.
If you or someone you know is in crisis, call or text the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline at 988. You can also text “BAY” to 741741 for free, confidential support through Crisis Text Line, available 24 hours a day. San Francisco Suicide Prevention’s crisis line is available at 415-781-0500.