I've unlocked my new settlement at Covenant after the previous residents.............um..........moved away. Yeah, that's it, they all packed up and moved away. Pay no attention to the landfill over there.

Anyway - even though I've unlocked the workbench, most everything in town is still classified as "owned".

Is this a bug or just how it's supposed to work?

An oversight I think.

I just scrapped everything and replaced or stored anything that I wanted to keep then retrieved them from the workbench.

edit: Seems to be a few issues there. Bodies don't disappear (I dumped them over the road), the ownership tags persisting and the turrets which don't fire at you, aren't scrappable and if you place your own turrets, they immediately open fire on the already placed ones.