n the world of mortgages, the big news this week was the decline and fall of IndyMac Bank’s home loan operation. The Southern California bank originated almost $77 billion in home loans last year and was a top 10 lender, according to National Mortgage News. With the demise of stated-income loans this year, IndyMac couldn’t reinvent itself fast enough as a conforming and FHA lender.

At the beginning of the week, IndyMac abruptly announced that it would shut down its mortgage lending operation and close its last mortgage Aug. 15. It said it immediately would stop accepting applications. Then the bank did something unusual: It asked for a 1 percent deposit on mortgages that had been approved and for which the rates had been locked. The 1 percent deposit is due today.

IndyMac said the fee would be refunded if it declined the loan. Brokers said they assumed that the 1 percent fee would be credited toward closing costs. But IndyMac imposed the surprise fee in a way that seemed designed to scare off business: Brokers would have to pony up for all of their customers awaiting IndyMac loans. They couldn’t pick and choose which loans to proceed with.

“If you do not submit the required fee for any individual loan as part of this process, all of your rate locks will be subject to cancellation,” wrote Drew Buccino, IndyMac’s mortgage chief, in a letter to mortgage brokers and bankers.

Brokers said they considered this to be IndyMac’s way of “clearing the pipeline” — reducing the number of loans it will have to fund before the drop-dead dates of July 31 for refinances and Aug. 15 for purchases.

“Bottom line is if the IndyMac rate is significantly better compared to the marketplace, the borrowers will cough up the lock fees,” a broker says. “If the outside market is about the same or significantly better, the borrowers will be down the road faster than you can blink.”