Myself, I was clueless about all of that until I started doing deeper research into the Organization's past, which led to me leaving within about a year. I knew that Witnesses in Mexico couldn't pray at meetings (as I recall) or do the other things that would identify them as a RELIGIOUS organization, but I had no idea that it had to do with property ownership.
Watchtower expects JWs to undergo persecution to the point of death if necessary, to maintain the beliefs and activities of JWs, but the Organization itself will flip and claim not to even be a religion when it comes to a materialistic issue such as owning property. I was stunned at the hypocrisy of that.