New Study Ranks Charleston, S.C. the Worst Place to Start a Small Business

RewardExpert has its study on the Best and Worst places to start a small business.  The study compared 177 metropolitan areas with more than 250,000 residents, using 30 data points in nine categories to determine which metropolitan areas will give your small business or tech startup the best chance to survive and succeed, and which ones will present you with the most daunting of challenges.

Based on the results, Charleston, South Carolina is ranked as the worst city to start a small business.

First let us provide a list of the Top 10 cities

1. Denver / Aurora / Lakewood, Colorado
2. Boston / Cambridge / Newton, Massachusetts
3. Bridgeport / Stamford / Norwalk, Connecticut
4. Minneapolis / St. Paul / Bloomington, Minnesota
5. Madison, Wisconsin
6. Lincoln, Nebraska
7. Hartford / East Hartford / West Hartford, Connecticut
8. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
9. Fort Collins, Colorado
10. Austin / Round Rock, Texas

Worst Places to Start a Small Business

1. Charleston / North Charleston South Carolina
2. Florida Panhandle Region
3. Inland Empire and Bakersfield, California
4. California’s Central Coast (Santa Maria-Santa Barbara-San Luis Obispo-Salinas)
5. Central Valley, California (Fresno-Visalia-Porterville-Merced-Modesto-Stockton-Lodi, California
6. Huntington-Ashland, West Virginia-Kentucky
7. Provo / Urem, Utah
8. Gulfport-Biloxi-Pascagoula, Mississippi
9. Port St. Lucie, Florida
10. Clarksville, Tennessee / Kentucky

Charleston / North Charleston, South Carolina Logic

The Charleston, South Carolina, metropolitan area comes in as the number one least-favorable place to start a small business for a number of reasons. In the first place, office rents are a sky-high $23.60 per square foot, well above the national average of $17.15 per square foot. Second, housing costs are above the national average for both renters (median monthly rent is $975 versus $803 nationally) and owners ($1,367 versus $1,217). Third, public transit is infrequent and underutilized, with only 1 percent of Charleston area commuters using public transportation. And finally, the area business ownership rate is below average, in the 8th percentile, with a very low percentage of startups (0.89 percent), and a below average five-year survival rate of 48.32 percent.

Compete Study Results