Zillow.com’s big selling point for house hunters is its real estate search function. Type in an address or a zip code and you can get information on houses — sale prices, number of bathrooms, and a slew of other tidbits. You can also get a good overall idea of how much homes are going for in a particular neighborhood.

There are a few tools beyond the standard information that a number of other real estate websites offer up:

• Make Me Move: Home owners can login into Zillow and set a “Make Me Move” price. These houses aren’t actually on the market, but the owners have decided that if a potential buyer offered a certain amount, they’d be willing to sell immediately. This information is valuable far beyond the ability to find out just what it would take to get your dream house. It also gives you a way to move to a particular neighborhood, even if no homes are actually for sale.
• Sellers’ Options: Not only can sellers list their homes for sale on Zillow, they can also edit information about their houses, add photos and generally better inform you, the buyer. All this information is made available with the idea that it will make it easier to sell a house.
• Mortgage Marketplace: Zillow allows potential buyers to request mortgage quotes from a variety of lenders. While I wouldn’t take any of these mortgage offers at face value — a mortgage requires careful scrutiny and one offered up through a site like Zillow needs even further examination — I do think that the “Mortgage Marketplace” can give you a starting point, and perhaps an idea of what you need to do to get a better mortgage (raise your credit score, reduce your debts, etc.).
• Real Estate Searches: Zillow has a wide variety of search options, making it easier to limit your house hunting to a very specific sort of house. You can limit searches by price, neighborhood, the number of bedrooms or bathrooms, or even the size of the lot the house sits on.

Overall, I think Zillow can be a useful tool for getting a general idea of what your options are as you are house hunting. You can get the information necessary to eliminate houses from your list — although there is no substitute for actually going and visiting prospective houses. I especially like the fact that you can save certain information by creating a free account; the less papers to misplace during a house hunt, the better.

But Zillow is not a one stop shop. While it can help you with a house hunt, there is plenty of information not available on this site. Even within the categories of data they make available, there are certain holes: there are, generously, perhaps as many as 3 million houses listed on Zillow, and in the grand scheme of things, that’s nothing. You’ll still have to do some legwork to make sure that you aren’t missing anything in your area.