Regional cities a 'good bet' for start-ups

Geelong in Victoria took out the top spot as Australia's best city for starting a business, according to research by accounting software company Reckon.

Regional centres such as Ballarat, Bendigo and Warrnambool in Victoria scored highly as did Toowoomba, Mackay and Townsville in Queensland.

With far better cost of living affordability than Sydney, centres such as Dubbo, Wagga and Albury were the top three regional NSW cities to start a business.

As for capital cities, only Melbourne and Brisbane made it into the top ten, with high cost of living a major factor across capitals.

"With regional cities beating out capitals, it creates an outline that while capitals are attractive, a higher cost of living could create barriers to profits and growth," Reckon CEO Sam Allert said.

"It's interesting that you might find some of the least obvious cities in Australia may offer the best environments for startup prosperity."

The study evaluated factors including cost of living, internet speed, talent pool and competition to rank the top 50 largest cities in Australia for their business appeal.

In 2018, Corey Dodd moved from South Australia's Victor Harbour - the poorest performing area for start-ups according to the research - to Geelong in pursuit of better business opportunity.

According to the study, Victor Harbor was the lowest scoring city in median income, young worker population, labour force and worker health.

For the owner of design company Elk Creative, shifting his life and work to Geelong was a business decision.

"It was quite a different experience in terms of the networking opportunities and the amount of people ... it is a good place for finding work," he said.

He said the city's proximity to Melbourne and more affordable living costs and infrastructure to support new businesses made it an attractive city to work in.

"Geelong is a small enough community for everyone to network quite well organically but it's large enough to support a lot of work opportunities," Mr Dodd said.

"You get introduced to someone and before you know it, they know someone and have referred you on."

Despite being home to 15 of the largest cities in Australia, no NSW city cracked the top 20.

At the bottom of the table is Nowra in NSW, scoring 38.55 out of 100 due to a poor talent pool and business landscape score.

Cally Strong opened the Book & Burrow Cafe in Nowra in 2019 and is unsurprised by her city's poor ranking.

"Being in hospitality, the first thing to go is people's luxuries when they're trying to save money."

She and other Nowra business owners are concerned about the city's business future with cost of living pressures impacting their ability to stay open.

"There are probably about three empty shop fronts across the road, and then just down from us there's about two more that ... have never had anyone in them," she said.

"They're sitting there rotting away and not making the streets look very nice."

Further up north, Sydney had one of the poorest cost of living scores (22.06 out of 100) and ranked 21 overall, yet it was NSW's best-ranked city.

With house prices continuing to increase and high road tolls, Sydney was the worst performer for rent, mortgage and commuting.

However, Sydney topped the list as the best Australian city for worker health and internet download speed.

With far better cost of living scores than the state's capital, Dubbo, Wagga and Albury were the top three regional NSW cities to start a business.