How to figure out if I'm better selling my BTL and putting the money in savings, or not...

numbercruncher8

TBH if you're out of the property market one of the dangers is that prices may rise without you in it.
The chances of that are quite slim in London as I see it in the near term, but you can't rule it out.

I'd dedicate some cash into housebuilders, particularly London facing ones. Portals such as Rightmove. And perhaps a risky bet on a London-facing agent (Foxtons). 

The housebuilders are well capitalised at the moment and that won't seem to change in the near term. Their operating margins are c.20%; it would need something spectacular to see them in trouble and even then I suspect either the government might step in with some incentives to prevent them from downsizing and sitting on the land.

They are more of a leveraged play: if house prices go down by 10%, the shares may be down 30%. But crucially if there is a boom, many of these companies will inevitably be worth more than there are today. Barratt reached almost 900p in February this year, you may be able to get them for half that price now. If the current situation proves to be a blip with no structural long-term changes then you could easily double your money there. In the case of Foxtons, maybe several times, but that is the nature of risk and reward.

So while the simplistic case is that renting = bad, the value of your pot of cash can still be tied to the fortunes of the market. Not a perfect correlation of course, but better than nothing.

AnotherJoe

I did exactly that with housebuilders the week after the Brexit vote after they had all plummeted, I did very well. not quite so sure its a similar situation now though because theres more of a structural problem unless the economy really can be restarted.