In most cases assembling your own team will give you the best builder, and the best architect. Most builders are terrible at design, and most architects are terrible builders. I know from experience, learned my lesson. I now leave building to the pros.

I agree with Summit and share his experience.

There are large differences between the two models. Do your due diligence before making a decision. Only one of the models represents your interests.

Where do you want the control of the results to be? With you? Or with a builder? Even if he has a great in house architect (hah), that in house architect will design things that fit within the strengths of that builder. And not outside his strong suit. That may not be the best solution to a problem.

What if your dream house has a tile roof and stucco? And that builder hates to do the labor for a tile roof and stucco? Do you think that you’re going to hear about all of the issues that tile roofs and stucco have until you waver and change your mind to suit the builder’s lack of strength in your preference?

Who pays the designer is who holds the control over the results. But you do need a builder’s input during design, or you may get the 10.3 M dream house design on a 900K budget.

For our custom home build we brought in the builder after the overall floor plan was agreed on with our architect. Originally we had thought we would go through the bidding process (See "What Your Contractor Can't Tell You" by Amy Johnston). Now that we are under construction I am so glad we didn't go through the process.

What I have realized is that the pure bidding process means that you are completely dependent on your architect's estimates for the cost to build. If your architect is finely tuned to residential building costs in your area, that is great. If he/she does commercial projects to pay the bills but does residential because he/she loves it, then he/she may not be completely up on building costs.

If we had designed our home with all the bells and whistles we had dreamed about and gone through the bidding process only to find we were waaayyyy over budget, that would have been terribly disappointing - not to mention the additional architect fees we would have to pay to redesign. Builders told us this is not an unusual situation to run into in the bidding route.

Our builder joined our meetings with our architect and helped us understand how our wants translated into costs. Armed with both the aesthetic considerations and the construction cost we could make informed decisions.