Housing Slump Related to Gross Domestic Product?

This author says no. I beleive the GDP has more to do with interest rates and deficit. Interest rates havent been lowered since the end of summer last year. This makes it harder for people to borrow money. That in turn leads to less homes being bought, because no one has 100,000 dollars laying around to go buy a house and that leads to the housing slump. Also with high interest rates people are not investing into real estate, because that takes alot of money which is hard to borrow right now with the high interest rates. Also our increasing deficit has an effect on our GDP. According to this article the deficit shaved half a percent on our GDP. It may not sound like much, but with a war in Iraq and the world not in a state of stability our deficit could jus continue to go up like it has, and then it will contiue to shave percents off of our GDP.