I want to buy the land in The Pale instead but the Jarl won't ask me to do a favor for him so I can buy the land. Is this because I need to buy the land in Falkreath first or did something go wrong? I did the quest to free the town from nightmares and thought it would enable the favor for him but it hasn't. I hope I didn't screw anything up.

I had an issue the other way around - I had to jump through extra hoops for Falkreath while the Pale house was available immediately.

Did you check with the steward as well? I don't know what else to suggest, I'm sorry.

You have to be a Thane already, or jump through hoops to get the Jarl's attention.

The favors are how you open the door to become Thane. I know the favor was available in the vanilla game, I've done it before. In my other game it was available immediately after the daedric quest but for some reason I can't do it now. I thought it might work if I waited a while but so far nothing.

Based on UESP, that favor, after you have done the daedric quest, has a prerequisite of level 22 or higher. Have you reached that level?

This.

You aren't forced to purchase any plots or in any order. I know that I haven't done the Daedric quest so the land is not available to me however Falkreath is bugged out due to killing the Jarl's housecarl.

Thank you, I was wondering if it was level specific. It didn't say so in the game guide, not that I saw at least.

We have a topic somewhere for listing all the bugs you find. If Bethesda has people reviewing these forums, they'll know what they need to patch.