In the UK, from the time a property is listed with an estate agent to the time conveyancing is completed can be on the order of several months, if not vastly more. It's not fast, especially because the buyer's and seller's lawyers doing the conveyancing take their sweet time to talk to each other, the surveys take time, and dealing with the local council and land registry, etc isn't immediate. Also, buyers in a property chain can cause problems if one of the deals in that chain falls through and they don't recover. It's hard work buying or selling somewhere in the UK. It's not a happy process!

The reason I think there's still a bubble is that housing costs are increasing faster than wages. More and more of peoples' budgets are being spent on just protecting themselves from the rain and scorpions, and at some point this cost just becomes untenable and a correction, or worse a crash will occur as the market can no longer bear such prices.

I'm very skeptical when I hear someone articulate that prices must always go up in the long term because they have in the past. They might continue to rise for a while, but eventually ... pop goes the bubble!