Actually, this makes perfect sense. If you choose to lock your rate, you are actually paying for this privilege (the .25%-.375% you are mentioning). But locking the rate has become so commonplace, people don’t even realize that this comes with a cost.

It’s just like credit card merchant fees that are rolled into the final cost that customers pay. You can’t get a discount at Ralphs for paying cash. Only when some merchant (usually some odd gas station) posts a different (lower) price for cash purchases, we see what those costs actually are.

Your lender is just like the gas station that offers a discount for paying cash: it makes the cost transparent.