House prices in Rhode Island are forecast to fall until the second quarter of next year, and are not expected to recoup their losses until the first quarter of 2009, according to a Massachusetts-based forecasting firm, Global Insight.

If the forecast proves accurate, the statewide median price of a single-family house will hit bottom during the spring of next year — ending a two-year decline that will have shaved the median price by roughly $20,200, or 7 percent. That is more than twice the average 2 to 3 percent decline forecast nationwide.

“In simplest terms, Rhode Island has been, and will continue to be, more significantly affected by the recent poor performance in the real-estate markets relative to the entire U.S.,” said Global Insight housing economist Michael Lynch.

Rhode Island’s more dramatic downturn in house prices is, in part, the flip side of the price appreciation rates here during the real-estate boom, which ranked among the biggest in the country. The double-digit price increases — up 19 percent in the spring of 2002 — prompted economists and real-estate professionals to draw comparisons with the stock market, suggesting that real estate offered a better return than Wall Street.

Nobody is saying that now.

“Housing is not like the stock market,” said Cecile Cohen, president of the Rhode Island Association of Realtors, “and people who try to time the stock market also get into trouble.”

The trouble in Rhode Island began to emerge last year, after the median price of a single-family house peaked in the second quarter at $282,644, and then began to slide. A year later, the statewide median price had fallen 4.4 percent, to $270,067. By the second quarter of next year, Global Insight forecasts, the median house price will fall to $262,450. (All prices are for existing single-family houses. They do not include new construction.)

Rhode Island’s house price declines are expected be less dramatic and shorter in duration than during the 1990s recession, when prices plummeted 13 percent over 7 years.

Cohen, the Realtors president, said that a senior economist at the National Association of Realtors has said that Rhode Island “should start seeing rising sales soon, and a lot of it is predicted on the fact that the state really has been gaining jobs at what he says is a respectable pace.” The forecast, she said, was for job growth of 1.3 percent.

Global Insight’s forecast for job growth at the end of this year, however, is 0.9 percent, or a net gain of about 4,300 jobs. The state’s average annual job growth rate is about 1 percent.

The Rhode Island Realtors association reported this week that the number of “projected closings” for single-family houses last month dipped to 791, from 1,025 during September of last year.

The inventory of unsold houses last month rose to 6,883, a 10-month supply, up from 6,376 houses, or a 9.2-month supply, in September of last year, the association reported. The market is generally considered to be balanced when the supply of unsold houses is about 5 to 6 months.

The average number of days on the market during July, August and September rose to 84, up from 74 during the same period last year.

Cohen said this is now a “buyer’s market” because there are so many houses to choose from and interest rates are still at historic lows.

Asked what she would tell first-time buyers who are considering a house now, when prices are forecast to decline, she replied that if you wait, “you’re gambling that prices are going to go down. What if interest rates go up? It’s going have the same effect. You have low interest rates now that make housing affordable… . You find your dream house, I say, buy it now. I can’t tell you what’s going to happen next year… There’s always risk.”

larditi@projo.com