This study contributes to the understanding of the relationship between Chinese local government debt and house prices by proposing the land channel as a novel explanatory framework. We construct a three-sector equilibrium model and demonstrate that local government debt positively affects house prices through both direct and indirect effects, with the indirect effect operating through the land market. However, the land use efficiency mitigates the positive effect of government debt on land and house prices within indirect effect. These propositions are empirically confirmed using a panel dataset of 260 cities in China from 2011 to 2019.