The track you drove in on

Two different things

There is the physical road — gravel, tarmac, or two ruts through a terrace — and there is the legal right to cross the land it runs over. In Lebanon these frequently do not coincide.

A great many mountain parcels are reached by a track that crosses a neighbour's land by long habit and nothing more. It has been used for forty years. Everyone in the village knows it. None of that appears on the title.

Why it holds until it doesn't

Informal access survives on goodwill, and goodwill survives as long as the neighbours stay the same. It fails at exactly the moment the neighbouring parcel is sold, inherited, fenced, or developed by someone with no history in the village and no reason to accommodate you.

It also fails when you apply for a building permit. A municipality can decline to permit a structure on a parcel without proper legal access, which turns buildable land into an expensive garden.

What registered access looks like

A servitude — a right of passage — is recorded on the title of the land it burdens and benefits the parcel it serves. It survives sale, inheritance and fencing, because it attaches to the land rather than to a relationship.

The alternative is direct frontage onto a public municipal road, which needs no servitude at all. When a plot has that, say so; when it doesn't, the question is which neighbour's land you cross and whether that crossing is registered.

Before you offer

• Ask for the title extract and read the servitudes section — not the seller's description of it.
• Walk the access from the public road to the parcel boundary and note every parcel you cross.
• Check each crossed parcel's own title for a corresponding registered burden.
• Ask the municipality whether the road you arrived on is public or private.
• If access is informal, treat resolving it as a condition of sale, not a detail to sort out later.

One more thing

Width matters as much as existence. A registered right of passage sized for a mule is a real servitude and a useless one if you intend to bring concrete trucks up it. Where a servitude exists, check what it actually permits.