My take on the comment: Compare to a family that takes out a loan to buy a house. If you ask their net-worth it's not just money in the bank, you have to subtract the debt that they owe. Parent comment was saying that you need to add the value of the home back in as well. It's a little different with leased property, but there may be some validity to the comparison. My analogy is not the same - a family with a mortgage will eventually get rid of that monthly payment and own the home. A family renting is not going to achieve the same thing. In the same sense I disagree with the comment - the property leased is not an asset, but it does have some value or it wouldn't be leased in the first place.

OTOH the article mentions that for a while companies liked to sell and lease-back which allowed them to appear to have cash even though the cash didn't have anything to do with business activities.