Kiwi slips with limits to go on bank loans THE New Zealand dollar fell to a week-low after Reserve Bank governor Graeme Wheeler imposed restrictions on home lending from October in an effort to cool a bubbling property market without hiking interest rates. The kiwi fell as low as 79.73 US cents and traded at 79.87 cents at 5pm in Wellington from 80.64 cents at 8am and 81.18 cents on Monday. The trade-weighted index dropped to 75.21 from 76.22 on Monday. Mr Wheeler on Tuesday announced restrictions on low-equity home loans in an effort to cool housing markets in Auckland and Christchurch, the country's two biggest cities. He has been reluctant to hike interest rates in response to the rising house prices, as doing so would lift the appeal of an already overvalued kiwi dollar. By using the macro-prudential tools, the Reserve Bank has "greater flexibility in considering the timing and magnitude of any future increases in the OCR" which is sitting at a record-low 2.5 per cent, he said. "They were a bit more restrictive than people thought they were going to be, and they're going to slow things down a bit to take pressure off interest rates," said Michael Johnston, a senior trader at HiFX in Auckland. He won't raise the OCR any time soon as they're scared of pushing the kiwi up sharply. The kiwi was little changed at 88.08 Australian cents from 88.11 cents on Monday, and fell to 77.91 yen at 5pm from 79.20 yen and to 59.83 euro cents from 60.92 cents.