You can still rent DVDs and video games from Family Video, and its stores still dot metro Detroit, years after its competition evaporated.

The key has little to do with stocking the right mix of movies to win back Netflix watchers. It does have to do with a real estate strategy its competitors couldn't match that has resulted in sizable local holdings.

The suburban Chicago-based company, which has 19 stores in metro Detroit and more than 700 across the country, leases very little of its space, unlike its former competitors like Blockbuster, which ceased operations in 2013.

The result, said the company's head of real estate, is an ability to control its own destiny.

As those competitors were facing challenges that included rent increases and an inability to shrink their leased footprints as the streaming television and movie revolution led by Netflix and others began to take hold, Family Video was sitting pretty in property that it owned. That gave it needed flexibility.