What is an unfurnished apartment in Mexico?

My exchange partner told me that furnished apartments weren't very common in Tijuana. What I didn't realize is that when they say "unfurnished", they mean without furniture, as well as lacking a refrigerator, stove and sometimes hot water heater. This, I did not expect. One day during our first week, Roberto took us past a friend's house that lived near the school. Lourdes, her husband Everisto and daughters Esperanza and Luz promptly began calling the apartment ads we had circled in the newspaper and every friend and acquaintance they could think of, in order to help us with our search. They had never seen our faces before. They even used their own phones to call, at no point did they say "You know these pinche moviles cost a fortune, how about we use your minutes, stranger?" This went on for two days - us hanging out at Lourdes' place while the whole family exhausted every resource looking for an apartment for us. They even drove us around town to scope out signs on telephone poles. They cooked us dinner at their house and drove us all the way back to the center of town in the evening. They bargained with people for $10.00 rent reductions. This is when I heard Esperanza ask a prospective landlord if the house had "a floor". Yes, "unfurnished" apartments at times lack "floor", the carpet or tile has been removed or never existed and there is only concrete. Same goes for "closets". Their may be a doorless indention in a wall, but any poles or shelves have left with the previous tenants. One vacating tenant proudly told us that though she intended to remove every appliance from the apartment, she was not going to rip the ceiling fans from the ceiling or tear the mounted blinds from the walls. At this point we also learned of "privadas". We were informed that it is more secure to live on a street that was barred from the main road by a huge gate and wall. It was also good to find a house within the privada with an additional barred gate and wall surrounding it and bars on all of the windows and security doors. We were given a further explanation of car thefts within privadas. We really didn't need to be convinced and settled on a small attached house within a privada, with an additional wall surrounding it and bars on all windows and doors, one step removed from the "cholo" neighborhood where the school lies, though we could see the school lurking at the top of the hill from the majority of the windows in our proud, new, 2,600 peso home.