I ran into the same bug as a lot of people, at least it seemed like the same, where I could not get the house in Markarth or become the thane. I discovered that the quest stage was 200! Given the number of topics that ask about the buggy quest to become the Thane of the Reach (Markarth), or at least where it gets asked somewhere in the thread, I was debating whether or not I should make a new one for this problem. I decided I would since I saw no mention of this particular issue with it. Please excuse me if this should have been included in one of the other threads, but I thought it stood some on its own. I will explain it more in full here as well.

I ran into the problem of not being able to get work or the option to buy the house from Raerek, the steward in Markarth. He would just recite his lines at me and not enter dialogue. This happened some time after I had done the quest to retreieve Hrolfdir's Shield for Jarl Igmund, after which I was expecting him to make the offer to become his thane. I had read that the player had to do a number of quests to clear out the Forsworn so I took a few more jobs from Raerek to do that. Then suddenly I ran into the problem where he would not go into any dialogue. I tried waiting a couple game days but that did not help. The inn keeper would not offer any work either. Periodically I would also check to see if Igmund would give the offer to be his thane but he never would.

Finally I decided to try a fix I read online, putting "player.setstage favor250 20" in console. I had helped enough people and I planned to buy the property so I figured making it happen was better than nothing. It did not work though. I had used "setstage" to help with bugged quests in the past so I knew the command worked. I used "getstage" on a hunch because I knew that "setstage" could not be used to lower the value. Sure enough, the Favor250 quest stage was at 200. I did some more research and found the "resetquest" command, which I hoped would resolve the issue. It did not. While it did bring the stage back to 0, nothing was really reset. Everything was as broken as it ever was and commands like "setstage" and "setobjectivecompleted" do not affect it. It appears that stage 200 means "This is just not happening," and even if you reset the quest, it cannot happen.

I actually tried a second time and avoided doing anything in Markarth (sans the Forsworn agent attack of course) except take quests from the Jarl and his Steward, hoping to avoid the need for a workaround. There was still no offer to become thane. Then Raerek stopped talking to me, so I checked again. Sure enough, the quest stage was 200. I do not know how or why this happens. I hope this will be addressed in the near future. It would not help me at this point in my current since it has already happened and I will have to go back to the earlier save again. This time I will just use the console to do it since I cannot rely on the game's script to make it happen properly. It would be nice if we did not have to do that, though, and certainly a lot less frustrating.

I hate to double post, but I have been doing some research with it. I went back and tried a few things, just to see if I could pinpoint where exactly it was doing this and I think I found out more information about the problem, though I admit that I am unsure. As to whether or not the two problems are connected I am unsure. I need to weed out a few more possibilities first.

At first it appeared entirely random, but I noticed that it would occur after certain things occurred, though whatever that "thing" was certainly seemed random itself: killing a particular bear near the road to Old Hroldan, learning the Word of Power at Dragoontooth Crater, etc. I tried setting the stage on "Favor250" to 10. It appears to keep the game from setting the stage to 200 randomly.

I also found out that it has nothing to do with whether or not the stage reached 200 since using it after setting the stage to 10 created the same apparent problem. I have tried using "setstage" and "setobjectivecompleted" with a couple other small quests and there were no issues there. They were all small things, such as bringing The Last Scabbard of Akrash to Ghorza, so I wondered what the difference might be. I noticed that none of them had a stage 0 on their quests. Whatever is causing the problem or is at the core of it, it does appear that having a stage 0 causes problems when resetting the quest. I will try a few more possibilities and see what else I can determine. I am not sure that removing stage 0 from the quests is actually a good idea, but I figure it is worth a shot.

I encounter the same issue. The first time I visited the Jarl, I was asked by the Housecarl why I came and answered "to talk to the Jarl", if I remember well, for I wanted to reveal what I had discovered so far in the quest "Forsworn Conspiracy", in hope to obtain a protection for Eltrys and his family (I discovered that it was sadly impossible to disclose the information gathered to the Jarl). Hence I did not choose the option "I want to find a job".

I then delivered Bothela's Stallion Potion to Raerek. Then I talked to the Jarl and asked him whether I could buy a house. He told me to talk with Raerek.

Now, I don't find any quest in the Jarl's dialogue options, and Raerek doesn't even initiate any dialogue.

I hope this bug will be fixed, as it is really annoying.