Apartment brokers/realtors aren't a thing here.

Since you're moving for grad school at CMU, I'd recommend looking at Oakland, Squirrel Hill, Homewood, Point Breeze, Shadyside, and the Regent Square area (it's a mix of Swissvale, Wilkinsburg and Edgewood). If you don't have a car, these neighborhoods have bus lines that right by CMU or within a block in these neighborhoods. Even if you have a car, parking at CMU can be expensive so it may be worth it to plan on bussing to/from campus.

August is a popular move-in month because of students coming in, vacancies start popping up now - June. Depending on how particular you are, what you look for in an apartment (must haves vs nice to haves), you can start looking now.

Water seems normal, electric and gas are really high compared to us. We have the same size house in Homestead and same suppliers and keep the house at about the same temp.

I would check to see how much appliances like your furnace are running as well as any potential internal water leaks (including running toilet, basement sink that's dripping ,etc). If your furnace is constantly running to stay at 67, you likely either have an insulation issue and/or thermostat issue.

Electric, you likely have some energy vampires. Try unplugging some stuff for a day and see if that changes your usage. You can log onto your Duquesne site to get a better idea of energy breakdown at least by week.

Either one is fine and has it's pluses and minuses. South Side Slopes is harder to navigate and depending where it is, you may be outside of reasonable walking distance to amenities (not to mention huffing up the slope). I believe the slopes is as safe as any other city neighborhood.

Greenfield is more residential with some smaller business districts. Generally easier to navigate, walkable. Much like folks have said 'beware realtors labeling the neighborhood the slopes when it's really Arlington, Mt Oliver, Allentown'...realtors also label parts of Hazelwood as Greenfield. This isn't to discourage, put any judgement on neighborhood titles, etc, but just know realtors play a little loose with neighborhoods to make it sound like it's in a 'nicer one'.

I would keep both options open and take close looks at the houses you're interested that meet your other criteria (bedrooms, yard or not, etc). For houses below ~175k in either neighborhood, I'd be prepared to take a really close look especially if they are 'recently updated' because for that price range you'll see a lot of amateur flips or poor-quality jobs where the upgrade is really to hide something or more make it more presentable. When we were looking for houses ~4 years ago in the 120k price range within city limits, I'd say 9/10 houses either needed significant work or updates (think crumbling dry wall, electrical, no major updates since 1970) or were flip jobs that were either poorly done (wonky tiling, trim work, etc) that would need to be redone and/or was hiding something worse behind it.

If you get to the point of the home inspection, know ahead of time it is largely a visual inspection. Home inspectors usually don't 'peel back' anything or do more than a surface level investigation. The inspection helps withs some things but is not a thorough report of EVERYTHING in the house.

I've always liked Phipps. The smell of fresh flowers and seeing the different exhibits is always a nice treat. I find their holiday theme is not 'in your face' which is also a plus. The only drawback is that it does get very busy, so expect to be doing a bit of a conga line shuffle in some of the narrow passages, but there's more space outside and in some of the rooms at the farther ends of the building.