It may have changed very recently I suppose, but with that caveat aside I believe you are, in fact, mistaken. The business model for the company has always been lease arbitrage. There was discussion at one point[0] of them having a related entity to purchase real estate, but I'm not sure what came from that, and even in that plan it was to be a separate investment vehicle, not the VC backed company being discussed here.

[0]https://therealdeal.com/2016/10/14/wework-wants-to-become-a-...

I heard, from someone who works for WeWork, that they do own at least some of the WeWork buildings in Manhattan. Admittedly it was a low level employee, so he could have been mistaken.