I have leveled my guy up to about 40 now and am still unable to buy land to build a house. I have searched the message boards for answers and I haven't seen any with the same problem I am having. The only letter I recieved from courier is the inheritance one and one with just a hand print. After waiting until I was about level 30 and never recieving the letter I tried going to each of the 3 cities and doing the quests to be able to buy it from the steward. I am now a thane at each city, but when I talk to the Jarl or steward at the city the dialogue is always the same and has nothing to do with buying a house. I tried clearing up as many quests as I could even clearing all the misc quests out but it didn't help. I just don't know if I screwed something up early in the game or what, but I can't figure out the problem. I recieved the letter for Falkreath around level 12 on my first character but I would hate to start completely over on this one if it could be avoided. Has anyone else had this problem before? The only quests I have atm are the stormcloak and thieves guild ones. Do I have to complete those before being able to buy a plot of land?

The only requirements to buy land are listed here (under "Available Houses"): http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Hearthfire#Available%20Houses

If you already done those prerequisite favors (quests) you have probably encountered a bug.

Try completing the Stormcloak storyline. Changing up the management of some cities as a result of the quest (not sure which) might jumpstart the process. I know I experienced problems with this DLC as well, and was completely unable to adopt children on one save.

You might want to delete HF and re-downloading it again. Once that is done, exit out of the game and re-boot the game and see if that might cure the problem when you "talk" to the officials again.

There are several fetching quests from those holds that can cause conflicts in the requirements. I know fetching a book for the alchemy woman in Morthal can bug the Falkreath one.

Have you gotten a letter from the Jarl of Falkreath? He always seems impressed by my character's actions even if they never set foot in his hold lol.

I see you're new to this forum. Here, http://images.uesp.net/c/c4/Fishystick.jpg.

That happens to me as well. I usually get that letter at around level 7.