A 1 bedroom in the inner ring might go for around $400/mo, and in the outer ring around $200-300/mo. Double those numbers for 2bdrm, and 3-4x those numbers for the inner ring of a T1 like Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, etc.

By American standards, that might be affordable, but median household income in China is around $300-400/mo, and the urban median household income is around $500/mo.

As such, it can be fairly unaffordable, but buyers who were lucky can continue to demand high(ish) rents while coasting on asset value depending on when they acquired property - especially inner ring property.

> A property bubble generally involves asset values rising past what rents support.

Rent is often used as a proxy for spending, but that doesn't necessarily work in China.

In China, because incomes outside of a couple top tier white collar employers remain low, private rents can be fairly inaccessible for the bottom half, so employers such as large factories often provide subsidized dorms/apartments, but these factory cities tend to be isolated and self contained from the larger community.

Furthermore, despite significant reforms, China still has a corruption problem, and the easiest way to convert black money into white money is real estate, so in that situation, asset depreciation is acceptable because it can make previously non fungible black yuan into fungible yuan or USD sellable or mortgagable assets.

This problem has constantly manifested all over Asia, and has tripped various former high flying economies like Malaysia (1990s), Thailand (1990s), India (2010s), Vietnam (present), etc.