Up to 100,000 homes are expected to be built under the scheme, which is designed to support growth and improve affordability in the housing market.
Cash-strapped developers will be given the opportunity to pay for the land later, when properties are sold, thereby bypassing the lack of upfront finance.
Aides said the plan, which comes amid criticism of the Government's attempts to boost economic growth, would support 200,000 jobs.
Getting the economy back on its feet will be a major theme for Cabinet ministers at the Tory conference in Manchester this week as the recovery continues to flag.
"The Government owns huge amounts of land, mostly brownfield sites, previously developed, either out of use or being run down in some way," Mr Cameron told The Sunday Times. "There's an enormous opportunity to build homes on those sites."
He said it was "appalling" that the average age of first-time buyers without financial support from their parents was now 37.
The Tories say that housebuilding fell to its lowest peacetime rate since 1924 under the last Labour government.
After being asked about the plan a further three times, he adds: "I have heard people speculating. I think it's time to think about that when we see what the landscape looks like."
The incendiary move would go some way to ensuring Mr Cameron was not beholden to his own backbenchers and would co-opt Lib Dem MPs to back government policy.
Mr Maude's comments, in an interview with The IoS, will fuel suspicions among the wider party, which is meeting for its autumn conference in Manchester today, that the Prime Minister is deserting the Tory grassroots in a desperate drive to kick-start the British economy and keep the coalition together.
In an interview with The Sunday Times, Mr Cameron insisted he was an "absolute lover" of the countryside. Mr Cameron also apologised for comments which were interpreted as sexist. "It's my fault. I've got to do better," he said, after twice appearing to insult women MPs in the Commons. Tory support among women has slumped.
In an attempt to diffuse the row over planning reform, the PM is to announce the release of thousands of hectares of disused public sector, mainly brownfield, land to build 100,000 new homes, creating 200,000 new jobs by 2015. Developers would be allowed to use a "build now, pay later" scheme, by paying for the land only once the homes were sold. Mr Cameron pledged "the most ambitious growth plan that we could possibly have".
In his interview Mr Maude says it is "absurd that virtually every other country has high-speed rail". He adds: "We are a long, thin country – it's insane that this hasn't been done before. The national government has to take a view on the route, consult and do all the right things, but actually you have just got to take a view that this is in the national interest and see it through."
Asked whether he had sympathy for the National Trust and other opponents of planning reform, Mr Maude says: "No. I mean our position is right. I think this idea that creating a presumption in favour of sustainable development is somehow a massive erosion of the ability to conserve, is bollocks, frankly.
"Actually the presumption that we are putting in place is arguably more constrictive, because it's a presumption in favour of sustainable development instead of just development. So I think there's a lot of misapprehension about this."
Norman Tebbit, writing in The Independent on Sunday today, says: "The Prime Minister's speech this week should set out the programme for a majority Conservative government. We, Tory activists and the electorate alike, want to know what sort of Conservative Mr Cameron really wants to be."
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