Starting a business? Beaumont-Port Arthur area No. 7 in U.S.

BEAUMONT-PORT ARTHUR – The Golden Triangle is climbing up national rankings. NerdWallet, a personal finance website, ranked the Beaumont-Port Arthur metropolitan area the seventh best place to start a business.

NerdWallet analyst Cindy Yang studied 183 U.S. metropolitan areas — with 15,000 or more businesses and populations of 250,000 and higher.

Results determined that the Golden Triangle “stands out because of its low annual housing costs and high business revenues.”

“On top of our low tax rates, we are an industry-rich area,” she said. “We have a lot of refineries and a lot of construction. While that industry isn’t helping every business directly, it’s helping fuel our entire economy."

Yang reports the Beaumont-Port Arthur metropolitan area offers an affordable cost of living while businesses thrive from the available spending dollars.

“The average household pays $8,316 a year for housing, the lowest in our Top 10, but businesses earn $2.8 million a year in revenue on average, the highest of our top ten cities,” the study states.

The top ten places to start a business, as published on NerdWallet, include
•  Boulder, Colo.
•  Wilmington, N.C.
•  Bridgeport-Stamford-Norwalk, Conn.
•  Evansville, Ind.-Ky.
•  Portland-South Portland-Biddeford, Maine
•  Cedar Rapids, Iowa
•  Beaumont-Port Arthur, Texas
•  Green Bay, Wis.
•  Fort Wayne, Ind.
•  Peoria, Ill.