H5game8

Despite an underwhelming 2025, Century 21 CEO Mike Miedler is excited about the year ahead, saying that agents who master business basics and lean into niches will succeed.

Inman Connect

Invest in yourself, grow your business—real estate’s biggest moment is in San Diego!

Mike Miedler is optimistic about 2026.

Although 2025 failed to be the standout year industry members had hoped for, Miedler — the CEO of Century 21 — said that easing interest rates, rising inventory levels and slowing home price growth have set the stage for a more stable landscape in 2026. And it gives experienced agents the chance to shine.

“A lot of people have a short rearview mirror, right? Like, people don’t remember what we would call a normal market — 2017, 2018, even, you know, 2019 — where you had 5 million sold, and you had a relative equilibrium between buyers and sellers,” he said.

“And I think what probably the COVID years did to us was allow ourselves to think that homes were going to sell themselves — you get multiple offers, and pick from the one that you felt was the best, and move on to the next deal in 30 days.”

“People who’ve been in this business a long time, who have very strong skill sets, are grabbing more market share. Those agents who are sticking to the basics and serving the consumer at a high level are going to continue to succeed,” he added. “I believe that’s a good thing. I don’t think that we win as an industry by having a lot of agents do a handful of deals. I think we win by having a lot of professionals do a majority of the business, and honestly, do it at a very high level.”

Miedler said he’s preparing C21’s affiliates for the year ahead by drilling down on the basics, tracking demographic trends — Gen-Z and minority groups are poised to make significant homeownership gains in the coming years — and helping agents shine through niche skills.

“I think there’s going to be a lot of good stuff that comes out of 2026 and beyond,” he said. “And a lot of it will be how we as professionals and as an industry keep pace with the demand of the new consumer of tomorrow.”

Inman spoke with Miedler shortly before the end of 2025. Here is that conversation, edited for clarity and brevity.

Inman: Time has flown. I think the last time we spoke was in the fall of 2024. So, how has this year been for you and C21? How would you define it?

Miedler: I think for consumers, it’s been more of a leveling of the marketplace. In the whole price and affordability conversation, I feel like we’ve seen a leveling off of interest rates and mortgage rates, and also kind of what a consumer should expect when they’re coming into the marketplace from an inventory and price perspective.

The good news is that I think we’ve seen greater affordability in 2025 than in the past few years. And that’s positive. I think we’ve seen things move back toward a middle ground, and again, depending on the ZIP code or state you’re looking at.

But when I look at the industry, it’s a little bit different. The industry is more distracted and turbulent, right? I mean, I think a lot of us thought, after we got the whole compensation settlement figured out, that things would level out.

But we’ve seen a lot of division, a lot more infighting in the industry, more lawsuits…. We had this whole debate on Clear Cooperation, and then later in the year, on market transparency.

So, from an industry perspective, which is mostly your readers, I think [2025] has been a little bit distracting. But I think, for consumers, the great news is that they don’t really see a lot of that stuff, because we have such amazing professionals on the front line who are just trying to get the job done for the people they serve.

Let’s start with the industry turbulence. How are you staying focused? And how are you keeping your agents focused?

I think we try to keep people focused on what we can control. And for our brokers and entrepreneurs, that’s focused on recruiting the right agents to represent the brand and bringing [brokers] value so that they can retain them.

I mean, we always say to our brokers, ‘Your job is to inspire your agents to achieve their personal goals,’ and I think that, through the consumer lens, it reflects on the brand by keeping our agents focused on the things that matter.

And the things that matter are prospecting and talking to potential customers, spreading themselves out in the market, whether it’s through social media or marketing themselves in other avenues, as a trusted advisor who recognizes and understands the market dynamics and what’s happening.

Because, as much as the market has normalized and kind of leveled off in a lot of places, the markets have moved quickly, and agents have got to be really coming to the table well educated on every single street they serve and able to portray that to their customers.

And honestly, our time has been spent focusing them on the basics of our business and serving the customer at a really high level.

I’ve had a few conversations about the basics of doing business, and artificial intelligence has been brought up every time. We’ve spoken a lot about consumer trust over the years, and AI has definitely complicated that — it’s getting harder to tell the difference between what’s real and what’s fake.

How are you handling that? How are you ensuring C21 agents can cut through the noise and build real connections with buyers and sellers?

I don’t know if you can see me, but I have a huge smile on my face. Last night, I was sitting on the couch watching a football game with a couple of my daughters, and I’m scrolling on my phone and see this video where there’s a device in a mall, and it does this young girl’s hair instantly. Puts her hair into this beautiful, tight bun in a matter of seconds. And I was like, ‘Is this real?’ And my kids are like, ‘Hold on. Let me look. Dad, it isn’t real.’

I mean, you don’t know what to believe nowadays in pictures, on video or anything else.

We are in the middle of utilizing a really cool AI agent assistant, which does a whole bunch of different things, but I just think about one of the things that it does, which is basically allowing our agents, in real time, sitting in front of a customer, to basically enhance property videos and virtually stage a room like that.

And AI is great for things like that — to help agents be more effective and efficient in marketing, lead generation, and, honestly, doing those things that are what I would call “operational tasks.”

But I think, to your point, all of that has to create more time for us to really warm those relationships, be real, and guide people through those more cumbersome, more emotional steps that only a human can do. And so, I’m hoping that it will enable us to do more faster, and then create higher-level, more specialized professionals.

Email Marian McPherson

Topics: Anywhere | commission lawsuits | customer service | lead generation | leadership | time management Show Comments Hide Comments Sign up for Inman’s Morning Headlines What you need to know to start your day with all the latest industry developments Sign me up By submitting your email address, you agree to receive marketing emails from Inman. Success! Thank you for subscribing to Morning Headlines. Read Next