I seem to be unable to get the jarl to give me this quest. I am already thane of the eight other holds, and I've done tons of quests in Eastmarch. But no matter what I do, I can't get this quest to activate. I've even tried using the console to activate the quest, and when I do it says "assist the people of eastmarch 5/5" and then instantly "completed assist the people of eastmarch" or something like that, and nothing shows up in my quest log and I still can't talk to anyone about purchasing the house in Windhelm.

Any ideas?

Is there a House in Windhelm that you can use? Most are destroyed , and the rest are occupied.. Become the Arch Mage of the colledge. There's your house..

Uh yeah heh. You can buy 5 houses in in the game, one of them is in Windhelm. I already am the arch mage of the college. I'm the leader of every faction that's possible to become to leader of, so I have multiple places I could use as a house in faction buildings. I also own the other 4 houses in the game that you can purchase, but I want to complete as many aspects of the game as possible so I'd like to buy the final house.

You're thinking of Winterhold, not Windhelm.

You are correct, MY BAD !