We just finished our annual study of line-item operating expenses for our Apartment Expense Report. As important as we believe this research is, we have to admit that we cringe every February when we're faced with a stack of year-end statements waiting to be analyzed one line at a time. This year we worked our way through what seemed to be a three or four foot stack of statements for 1,073 properties with 121,764 units in the Puget Sound region. Here are some of the results that investors should pay attention to.