Re-mortgaging and re-evaluation questions

rebeccak

I currently owe about £47,000 and am on a fixed-term deal with the Bank of Scotland which finishes at the end of this month. I bought my flat for £103,000 but, unfortunately, that was in 2007 at the height of the housing market bubble! Looking at the BOS website, it doesn't look like the deals I would be offered as an existing customer would be very good but I'm concerned about the costs and risks involved in moving.

Basically, how would the flat be re-valued and what would I typically have to pay for this? Would they just go off what I paid (taking into account the general fall in house prices since then) or the prices currently being paid for homes in the area - or would they want to come out and do a visit?

If they want to do a valuation visit:
a) my flat is not in as good condition as other flats in the area - It's not falling down or anything but I've got a very old kitchen, a very old bathroom etc - Basically, I'm spending my money on trying to get the mortgage paid off as soon as possible rather than doing the place up and having a big mortgage.
b) my flat's in a very old converted house and there are cracks in some of the walls. When I bought it, I had a full structural engineers report and they said that the cracks were very old and there were no current concerns about subsidence etc - I've got the original structural engineers report from 6 years ago (somewhere!) and *I* know that there have been no new cracks in the time I've lived here but would that be enough for a new mortgage provider?

My concerns are that I would pay upfront for a valuation and either they will say the property isn't worth as much as I thought so I haven't got the right LTV for the mortgage or that they require a full structural engineers report so I will have to pay even more money upfront with no guarantee at the end that I would qualify for their mortgage.

Is this how it works? Am I right to be concerned about this and considering just taking the higher rate offered by my current provider?

The other thing I'm mulling over is that I currently have 19 years left on my mortgage but am choosing to overpay £250 per month. I prefer having the longer-term mortgage with low monthly payments and overpaying on it rather than shortening the mortgage term and having higher basic monthly payments to meet as it gives me the option to pay less if my circumstances change. My current bank (and, I understand, a lot of the others), limit you to overpaying up to 10% of the mortgage value and, if I keep overpaying at the current rate, I'm likely to go over that limit within the next few years.

Therefore, I'm considering whether I should decrease the term of my mortgage (but then be committed to that higher basic monthly payment) so that I still have the option to overpay at my current rate. This isn't really a question for anyone but me but I just thought I'd include it in my post in case anyone does think 'you also need to consider x' or 'actually there's a mortgage deal that would overcome this issue'!

Thanks.