The Reserve Bank of New Zealand has said it may ease its restrictions on low deposit mortgages as early as the end of this year.RBNZ deputy governor Grant Spencer said in a speech to a business audience in Auckland on Friday that the bank's limit on high loan-to-value ratio mortgages, imposed in October, had helped ease pressures in the housing market and reduced risks for the banking system.Spencer said the bank estimated that if the LVR limit had not been imposed annual house price inflation might be running 2.5 per cent higher. But he said there were many risks for the housing market, including the outlook for net migration. "We've stated that the LVR [limits] are temporary, but before removing them we want to be confident that the housing market is responding to interest rate increases; and that immigration pressures are not causing a resurgence of house price pressures," Spencer said."It will take some time to gain this assurance. At this stage we consider the earliest date for beginning to remove LVRs is likely to be late in the year," he said.In a March 27 speech on the coordination of macro-prudential policy and monetary policy, Spencer said the bank would have greater scope to ease the restrictions as interest rates moved back to more "normal" levels. The bank has previously said the "neutral" level for short term interest rates was between four per cent and five per cent, which would have suggested the Reserve Bank would not be able to ease the high LVR speed limit until well into 2015, given the bank forecast interest rates would not reach 4.5 per cent until mid 2015.