The parent company of Connecticut-based Webster Bank reported a profitable first quarter to start the year and the closing on a purchase of a large residential real estate portfolio in Eastern Massachusetts, where the company has a significant presence.

The portfolio is valued at $242 million. It has a four-year duration and the yield on the portfolio exceeds that of Webster’s total residential portfolio, which is at 3.72 percent.

“It’s consistent with our strategy to decrease some of our asset sensitivity,” Webster CFO Glenn MacInnes said on a recent earnings call. “On a qualitative side, it’s 500 high-quality customers in and around the Boston area and will allow us the opportunity to develop additional banking relationships with these customers.”

The portfolio purchase comes as Webster has been trying to hit its goal of $1 billion in deposits in the Boston market in its first five years. The bank expanded into Boston in 2016, but reported falling behind on this goal last October with $500 million in deposits in its Boston branches three years into the five-year plan.

Part of that could be due to deposit pressure, which has been fierce in the Boston market.

Despite the Fed pausing interest rate hikes, Webster President and CEO John Ciulla said deposit costs in Boston are still higher than its core market.

“And so that’s a phenomenon as well,” he said on the earnings call. “We’ve seen promotional pricing sort of stabilize in the last couple of weeks with the Fed on hold, but we haven’t seen anything going down yet. So, I think there is a lag between the Fed funds increase and the natural increase in deposits and we’ve factored some of that in, but it is sort of stabilizing at this point.”

Aside from the portfolio purchase, Webster had a very successful start to the year.

The company reported net income of $97.5 million, or $1.06 per diluted share, for the first quarter of 2019, compared to $78.1 million, or $0.85 per diluted share, for the first quarter of 2018. Net interest income in the quarter was $241.6 million, an increase of 12.8 percent from the year before, and the margin grew to 3.74 percent, up 30 basis points from one year prior.

Ciulla said deposits in the quarter grew at a faster clip than most commercial banks as a whole and total loans were up more than $1 billion year-over-year, reaching  more than $18.8 billion. The company saw increases in most loan categories except for consumer loans, which were down more than $180 million year-over-year.

Non-interest income was $68.6 million, down slightly from the first quarter of 2018.

The provision for loan losses in the quarter was $8.6 million, down $2.4 million from the first quarter of 2018. Total nonperforming assets as a percentage of total assets was 0.87 percent, compared to 0.79 percent one year ago.