Why choose SOS Moving?
As well as people moving to a new place in inspiring films, you’ll also literally snap your fingers and get everything in your new home. Our professionals can accomplish a move of any complexity, so even an antique piano of your grandmother will be safely transported to a new place.
With us, you can confidently rule out the fear of uncertainty when you don’t know where your belongings are. We are a phone call or email away from giving you peace of mind by sharing the latest updates about your shipment and informing you about the delivery date or window.
Enjoy our full-service moves, including moving, packing, unpacking, furniture disassembly and reassembly, and storage services. Request a free quote for a smooth long-distance relocation experience.
Our office movers in Downtown Los Angeles deliver top-level commercial moving services. We’ll cope with any office furniture, professional equipment, and even medical practice. Due to a professional approach to all stages of your office move, we help you not to lose excitement and inspiration from your new office in the overwhelming packing, lifting, and unpacking process.
Sure, our movers can bring packing materials and boxes if you need them. Make sure you mention that you need them to our operators in advance.
No, tips are not included, and it’s up to you how much to tip your movers. Tips are always appreciated but not required.
Your apartment moving cost depends on factors, such as the type and size of your property, the complexity of your move, the number of bedrooms, the volume of your items, zip code, etc. At SOS Moving, we offer flat and hourly rates. The hourly rate depends on the number of movers to be involved and the size of the moving truck. Flat rate is based on the volume of belongings you need to move, and it’s the best option for long-distance moves. To know your moving cost, please contact us or submit a form on our website to request your free quote.
You should schedule your move date as early as you can. If you’re moving locally, at least 1-2 weeks in advance, for long-distance moves, we recommend getting a quote at least 2-4 weeks before your move date.
You can choose any convenient day for your relocation, and yes, we can help you move on weekends and holidays.
A safe relocation is our goal, so we’ll provide you with a detailed list of items that are prohibited to transport. It includes perishables, hazardous materials, firearms, batteries, etc. We also don’t recommend packing your personal and irreplaceable items, including family heirlooms, family photos, jewelry, documents, etc. Carry them with you during the move.
We accept cash, all major debit and credit cards, and certified checks. We don’t accept personal checks. There will not apply any transaction fee on card transactions.
Yes, we’ll contact you prior to delivery. We’ll deliver your belongings within the given moving arrival window. In case the window is no longer possible, we’ll also contact you in advance and set another delivery time.
Hiring movers in Downtown Los Angeles is mostly a question of buildings, and a lot of them were never meant to be homes. The City's Adaptive Reuse Ordinance of 1999 at first applied only to buildings put up before 1974 in or near Downtown, and it let owners turn them into apartments, lofts and hotels. The first project finished under it, the Old Bank District on Main Street, turned three office and bank buildings from 1903, 1904 and 1907 into 230 apartments.
Buildings designed for bank clerks and office tenants were not planned around king-size bed frames. Before the truck leaves our base, we ask for the elevator cab size, whether there is a separate freight car, and which entrance the building wants movers to use. Lobby floors get runners, door frames get pads, and a piece that will not stand up in the cab is taken apart in the unit instead of being wrestled into it.
The ordinance changed the scale of the place. By its 20th year, the Los Angeles Conservancy counted more than 46,000 homes Downtown, up from about 11,600 before it passed, and an estimated 79,500 residents. In a neighborhood that dense, the reserved elevator window sets the pace of the day, not the truck. That is how our apartment movers plan a Downtown job: crew size and start time are worked backward from the slot the building gives you.
East of the Historic Core, the Arts District grew up around Santa Fe freight depots and the warehouses built for the citrus trade. Artists began turning those warehouses into studios with living space in the late 1960s, and in 1981 the City's Artist in Residence ordinance made it legal for artists to live and work there. A live/work loft can mean one very large room, a freight door in place of a lobby, and heavy studio equipment a few steps from the bed, so we list the work side of the space as its own inventory and bring blankets and dollies to match.
Downtown was the pilot zone for LA Express Park, which LADOT launched in 2012, and meter prices there still move with demand, block by block and by side of the street. A metered space on a busy block is neither cheap nor reliably open when a truck pulls up. Yellow curbs are the other thing people point to: LADOT enforces them Monday through Saturday, 7 AM to 6 PM unless the sign says otherwise, and a commercial vehicle gets half an hour to load or unload. That covers a quick office drop, not a two-bedroom, so we treat meters and yellow zones as a fallback and plan around a loading dock or a posted curb.
A posted curb means temporary no-parking signs. In the City of Los Angeles, requests and questions about those signs go to LADOT's Special Traffic Control Division, so if your building has no dock, raise it when you book rather than the week of the move. Also read the red Anti-Gridlock signs on major streets: the City's code lets LADOT clear the curb lane on weekdays between 6 a.m. and 7 p.m. wherever traffic demands it, a stopped vehicle can be towed, and there is no grace period at either end of the posted hours. We schedule loading and unloading around those hours instead of hoping for a quiet moment.
If your building has an HOA or a management office, expect it to ask whichever Downtown Los Angeles moving company you hire for a certificate of insurance before it releases the elevator or the dock. We issue the COI for $50 and make it out to the exact names the building lists, then set the crew's arrival to the start of your reserved slot.
The Historic Core, the old Spring Street financial district and Broadway are where the reuse ordinance got its start, in former banks, office blocks and even theaters. Those buildings reward patience. We walk the route from the unit to the curb before anything moves, pad it end to end, and, on a crew of three or more, one person stays with the elevator so the car never sits idle.
The Arts District runs out to Downtown's eastern edge, where Vignes Street passes a couple of blocks from the concrete channel of the Los Angeles River. Its warehouse-era buildings were made for freight, so the useful question there is which door and dock the building wants movers to use. We confirm that with management the day before, because on a working street the dock may already be booked for someone else's delivery.
South Park has its own calendar. Crypto.com Arena sits at 1111 South Figueroa Street next to L.A. Live, and its parking lots line Chick Hearn Court, Georgia Street and Olympic Boulevard. If your South Park address is close to the arena, we check its event schedule before choosing a start time, so the unload does not overlap with event traffic on the same blocks.
| District or building type in Downtown Los Angeles | What to plan for on moving day |
|---|---|
| Converted bank or office building, Historic Core | Elevator cab size and whether a freight car exists; runners across the lobby; large pieces taken apart upstairs |
| Arts District live/work loft | Loading through the freight door or dock the building names; studio equipment packed and listed separately |
| High-rise near L.A. Live, South Park | Arena event schedule checked before the start time; elevator slot and COI confirmed with management |
| Block with only yellow-curb loading | Half-hour limit for commercial vehicles, Monday through Saturday, 7 AM to 6 PM unless posted; temporary no-parking signs arranged ahead instead |
| Street with red Anti-Gridlock signs | No stopping during the posted commute hours and no grace period; loading set outside that window |
Our crews leave from our base at 5530 Jillson Street, and Downtown is one of the shorter runs we make: about 6 miles on I-5, around 10 minutes without traffic. What can change that estimate is the East Los Angeles Interchange, where I-5 meets I-10, US-101 and SR-60 just east of Downtown. At commute hours that junction, not the distance, sets the drive time.
We work Monday through Sunday, 8AM – 6PM. Downtown days tend to start early: the truck should be at the dock when the elevator window opens, and street-side loading should wrap up before the evening commute turns curb lanes into travel lanes. Weekends are open too, which helps when a building keeps weekday slots scarce.
When both addresses are Downtown, the drive is the shortest part of the day and the two elevator windows are the longest. Book the second building's window to open a little after the first one closes, not at the same hour, so you are not paying for a crew that stands in a lobby waiting for a key card.
Every Downtown job carries a 3-hour minimum, and overtime starts after 8 hours. As our local moving rates put it, double drive time applies to moves over 10 miles; ask when you book whether that touches your move. With the base this close, a same-day move is possible when a crew is free, though a building that wants a COI and an elevator booking may need more notice than a few hours.
Our moving services in Downtown Los Angeles go well past apartments, and offices are the obvious next case. Plenty of Downtown lofts were offices once, and the City has since widened adaptive reuse citywide while keeping a separate Downtown program in its new zoning code. A business moving between floors, between towers or out of the core deals with the same building rules as residents, plus dock bookings and a workweek it cannot lose. Our office and commercial moving crews work seven days, 8AM – 6PM, so a Saturday or Sunday move can leave Monday untouched.
If you are comparing cross-country moving companies for a move out of Downtown Los Angeles, check the numbers on the contract. A move that stays in California, up I-5 toward the Bay Area for example, falls under the state Bureau of Household Goods and Services, which requires a household mover permit known as the CAL-T number; ours is CAL-T0192140. For a move across a state line, look for USDOT 3398018 and MC 1153871 on our paperwork. Our long-distance moving page explains how we plan the trip itself, but the building side does not change with distance: the COI and the elevator slot still come first.
Echo Park and Silver Lake are the next neighborhoods to the northwest, close enough that the drive is the short part of the day and the Downtown building rules are the long one. If that is your direction, see our Echo Park moving page and the Silver Lake moving page.
Koreatown connects the other way, west along Wilshire Boulevard and the Metro D Line, which runs from Union Station through Downtown and Westlake and stops at Wilshire/Vermont and Wilshire/Western. If the new place is a Koreatown apartment building, book its elevator as early as the Downtown one; our Koreatown moving page covers that side of Wilshire.
