Rentals

The hottest thing in movie rentals is as old as the Coke machine -- and just as red. Redbox movie kiosks are popping up by the thousands in supermarkets, drugstores, restaurants and convenience stores around the country. The kiosks stock DVDs that rent for $1 a day, a remainder-bin price that is less than a cup of coffee at Starbucks.

As the recession drags on, national retailers are mass mailing requests for rent reductions to their landlords. Does a small-business tenant stand a chance of getting the same relief? It's not easy, industry experts say. "The landlord has no obligation to reduce the rent any more than he has the obligation to increase your rent because you are making too much money," said Rafael Padilla, a principal at Par Commercial Brokerage in Santa Monica.

You're paying your bills, but your landlord isn't. And you're the one holding the eviction notice. This is becoming an all-too-familiar scenario for thousands of renters nationwide who have become the unintended victims of foreclosures. Banks are booting good tenants onto the streets with little to no notice after seizing a property from a delinquent owner, ignoring tenant leases.

The lousy economy continues to quash the commercial real estate market, driving down rents and pushing out tenants. Nearly a third of office space is flat-out empty in parts of Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties. A fifth of the offices are empty in the once-crowded Burbank Media District.

Warner Bros. is setting its sights on Redbox and Netflix amid the latest sign that consumers are abandoning retail DVD stores in favor of the fast-growing rental kiosks and mail subscription companies. The Time Warner-owned studio on Thursday joined 20th Century Fox and Universal Pictures in announcing that it would not provide movies to leading kiosk operator Redbox until 28 days after they go on sale. In a surprising move that hasn't yet been made by any of its competitors, Warner said it would impose the same restriction on Netflix and other DVD-by-mail subscription providers unless they agreed to "a day-and-date revenue sharing option."

Los Angeles office landlords will probably be forced to slash rents as much as 30% in the first half of the year as job cuts create more empty space, Grubb & Ellis Co. said Wednesday. Office vacancy rates in Los Angeles County jumped to 12.2% at the end of 2008 from 9.7% a year earlier, the Santa Ana broker said. "Southern California counties got caught in the economic whirlwinds of 2008, and there will be little or no letup in 2009," said Jack Kyser, an economist who worked on the report.

Sony Pictures Home Entertainment's new licensing deal with Redbox Automated Retail -- operator of those bright-red $1 DVD rental kiosks in grocery and convenience stores -- adds up to some serious coin. Sony stands to collect about $460 million over the term of the five-year agreement, which extends through September 2014, according to regulatory filings.

Netflix, seeking not to be bypassed in the transition to digital distribution of movies, removed limits on how many films and TV shows subscribers can watch over the Internet. The move comes as Apple Inc. is set to unveil plans for users to rent major Hollywood movies online through its iTunes Store. Netflix, which pioneered the online movie rental business in 1997, had capped the number of hours available to its 7 million subscribers based on the price of their monthly plan.

If home prices are plunging, then why are rents going up? That's a question Lynn Washington wants answered. The lease on his Marina del Rey apartment is expiring, and he can't find anything to rent for his budget of $1,000 a month. "It boggles the mind," said Washington, 59, who works as a liaison for international students at Santa Monica College. "I don't make enough to buy. And yet I don't make enough to afford to rent. I'm caught between the two."

Every time Sohaila Rezazadeh rings up a sale at her Exxon station in the Oakton section of Fairfax, Va., her cash register sends the information to Exxon Mobil's central computers. If she raises the price of gasoline a couple of pennies, chances are that Exxon will raise the wholesale price she pays by the same amount. Through a password-protected Web portal, Exxon notifies Rezazadeh of wholesale price changes daily. That way the oil giant, which is earning about $3.