Utilities, do's and dont's questions

[Esther Thomas]

Hi All, for those landlords who pay for the utilities of their units, do you put in explicit "no nos" into the lease itself. There are a couple of units where the landlord pays the utilities (aka my parents) but when I walked by the property last week I noticed they have window air conditioning units. I think it's something the tenants put in themselves, and might also be the reason the utility bills have gone sky high. I suppose rent could be increased to account for the higher utility bills, but in general is there a general clause in a lease that you normally put in to disallow things such as the window air conditioner or other modifications to the unit. If someone has a solid lease agreement to cover all the caveats that they're willing to share, I'd love to see what sort of things people call out in their lease to avoid headaches such as this. Thanks so much!