Rhode Island’s spring housing market is opening with lower prices and slower sales, a report released yesterday shows.

The median price of a single-family house in February fell 4.7 percent, to $245,000, from the same month last year, the steepest decline for that month since 1995, according to The Warren Group, a Boston-based research firm.

House prices now have fallen for 11 straight months.

So far this year, the median house price in the state is down just over 9 percent from the first two months of last year, the report said.

“Not good news for current homeowners, but hopefully this will be an incentive for homebuyers to purchase houses before the height of the housing season, in the summer months,” The Warren Group’s chief executive, Timothy Warren Jr., said in a statement.

Sales this year have plummeted. In February, sales of single-family houses fell 18.6 percent, to 417, compared with 512 sales in February of last year, the report said. That’s the largest drop in the month of February since 1991, when sales fell nearly 36 percent, according to The Warren Group.

Single-family house sales during January and February were down about 22 percent compared with the same period last year.

The Warren Group reported that condo sales also plunged, although prices continued to inch up. In February, condo sales declined 30.2 percent, with 90 units sold, compared with 129 sales in February of last year. Condo sales in January and February combined fell nearly 28 percent.

The median price of a condo in February rose by just over 3 percent, to $219,500, compared with $213,000 a year earlier. Condo prices for combined January and February, however, were down 5.5 percent, to $213,400, compared with $226,000 during the same period last year.

The Warren Group’s county-by-county breakdown shows that house price declines were the most severe in Providence, where the median price during the first two months of the year fell 10.2 percent, to $220,000, compared with $245,000 during the same period last year.

House price declines during the first two months of this year also were reported in Kent County, were the median price fell 5.9 percent, to $225,000, compared with $239,000 a year earlier; and Washington County, where prices in January and February ticked down 1.5 percent, to $320,000, compared with $325,000 during the same period last year.

In Bristol County, the report said, the median house price during January and February rose 26.5 percent, to $332,000, compared with $262,500 during the same period last year. (The Bristol County data is incomplete, however, because The Warren Group’s data collection does not include Barrington.)

In Newport County, the median house price during January and February rose about 2.9 percent, to $360,000, compared with $350,000 during the same months of last year.

Condo prices differed dramatically by county. In Bristol County (excluding Barrington), for example, the median price of a condo during January and February rose 26.5 percent, to $278,000, compared with $219,750 during the same period last year. Condo prices in Newport County during the same period also rose, albeit by just 1.4 percent, the report said.

In Kent County, by contrast, the median condo price during January and February plunged 22.3 percent, to $189,950, from $245,500 a year earlier, according to The Warren Group.

In Washington County, condo prices in January and February fell 9.8 percent, to $231,705, compared with $257,000 during the same period last year. During the same period, condo prices in Providence County fell about 5 percent.

It should be noted that the median prices by county are based on a small number of sales, so even a few transactions can make the price fluctuations appear more dramatic.

larditi@projo.com