C21’s Mike Miedler prepares for “tomorrow’s new consumer”

Mike Miedler is optimistic about 2026.

While 2025 wasn’t the best year industry members had hoped for, Miedler — Century 21’s CEO — said easing interest rates, rising inventory levels and slowing home price growth have set the stage for a more stable landscape in 2026. And it’s giving experienced agents a chance to shine.

“A lot of people have a short rear-view mirror, right? For example, people don’t remember what we would call a normal market – 2017, 2018, even 2019 – where you had 5 million units sold, and there was a relative balance between buyers and sellers,” he said.

“And I think what the COVID years probably did to us was we allowed ourselves to think that houses would sell themselves – you get multiple offers, and you pick the one you thought was the best, and move on to the next deal within 30 days.”

“People who have been in this industry for a long time and have very strong skills are taking more and more market share. Agents who stick to the basics and serve consumers at a high level will continue to succeed,” he added. “I believe that’s a good thing. I don’t think 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 the majority of the business, and frankly, by doing that at a very high level.”

Miedler said he’s preparing C21’s member companies for the year ahead by drilling down to the basics, monitoring demographic trends — Gen-Z and minority groups are poised to make significant gains in homeownership in the coming years — and helping real estate agents hone their niche skills.

“I think there will be a lot of good things to come from 2026 and beyond,” he said. “And a big part of that will depend on how we as professionals and as an industry can keep pace with the demands of tomorrow’s new consumer.”

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. How has this year been for you and C21? How would you define it?

Miedler: I think it’s been more of a leveling of the market for consumers. In the whole conversation about pricing and affordability, I feel like we’ve seen a leveling off in interest rates and mortgage rates, as well as what a consumer can expect coming into the market from an inventory and pricing perspective.

The good news is that I think we will have seen greater affordability in 2025 than in recent years. And that is positive. I think we’ve seen things move 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 different. The industry is more distracted and turbulent, right? I mean, I think a lot of us thought that after we worked out the whole compensation scheme, things would stabilize.

But we’ve seen a lot of division, a lot more infighting in the industry, more lawsuits…. We had a whole debate about clear cooperation, and later in the year about market transparency.

So from an industry perspective, which is mainly your readers, I think [2025] has been a bit distracting. But I think the good news for consumers is that they don’t really see that kind of thing much because we have such great professionals on the front lines just trying to get the job done for the people they serve.

Let’s start with the turbulence in the sector. How do you stay focused? And how do you keep your agents focused?

I think we’re trying to keep people focused on what we can control. And for our brokers and entrepreneurs, this is aimed at recruiting the right agents to represent and deliver the brand [brokers] value so they can keep it.

I mean, we always say to our agents, “Your job is to inspire your agents to achieve their personal goals,” and I think that, through the consumer lens, is a reflection of 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 in the market, whether it’s through social media or marketing themselves in other ways, as a trusted advisor who recognizes and understands the market dynamics and what’s happening.

Because, even though the market has been normalized and more or less leveled off in many places, markets have developed rapidly and agents on every street they serve must come to the table well trained and able to convey that to their customers.

And honestly, we’ve spent our time focusing on the basics of our business and serving the customer at a very high level.

I’ve had a few conversations about the basics of business, and artificial intelligence kept coming up. We’ve talked a lot about consumer trust in recent years, and AI has certainly complicated that: it’s becoming increasingly difficult to tell the difference between what’s real and what’s fake.

How do you deal with that? How do you ensure 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 big smile on my face. Last night I was sitting on the couch watching a soccer game with some of my daughters, and I scroll on my phone and see this video where there’s a device in a mall, and it instantly does this young girl’s hair. Brings her hair into this beautiful, tight bun in seconds. And I thought, ‘Is this real?’ And my kids say, ‘Wait a minute. Let me see. Dad, it’s not real.’

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

We’re working on using a really cool AI agent assistant that does a lot of different things, but I’m just thinking about one of the things it does is allow our agents to enhance real estate videos in real time, while they’re sitting in front of a client, and virtually stage a room like that.

And AI is great for that kind of thing: to help agents be more effective and efficient in marketing, lead generation, and, honestly, doing those things I would call “operational tasks.”

But I think all of this should create more time for us to really warm those relationships, be real, and guide people through those more circuitous, more emotional steps that only a human can do. And so I hope that it will allow us to do more faster and then create more specialized, higher-level professionals.

Email Marian McPherson