The adaptable unit can then be packed up with all its furnishings and transported on a lorry just as quickly.

The creators of Ten Fold hope to revolutionise the UK property market by mass producing the stackable homes.

Their aim is to one day create a product that can be both unpacked and packed up again using nothing more than a hand crank.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=88Nhz45XMJA

Inventor David Martyn, 58, said its built-in folding partitions and storage space allow it to be used as a home, classrooms, business spaces, pop-up shops, hospital operating theatres and emergency shelters for refugees.

Furnishing such as sofas, beds, chairs, and tables can be tucked away in storage spaces and the whole unit is folded away and relocated in a truck without any specialist tools.

Mr Martyn and his team of four engineers have spent seven years and £4m developing and patenting their designs.

The father-of-four from Wallingford, Oxfordshire, told the Daily Mail: “It is households and instant extra bedrooms, it’s mobile operating theatres - none of which have been possible until now.

“The idea is that this technology could easily make a £100,000 home affordable.

“It could make the option for someone to own a building who doesn’t own the land.

“It will allow the young to get a building without owning the land, it changes the dynamics of the market which does need to change because it is a transportable property asset.

“There’s never been one before and this is a real solid building that doesn’t have to stay in the same place.”

The Ten Folds can also be fitted with solar panels and attachable units connecting them to the national electrical grid.

“It’s totally like any normal house, the only issue is that these units can be devised so they can be plugged into traditional infrastructure,” said Mr Martyn.

“This is about speed, size and ease and there’s nothing else that does it.”

Mr Martyn, an architect, who said his children pay extortionate rents in London, said he was inspired to build transportable flat-packed homes after watching a lorry go past him.

Explaining his idea to use levers to allow a house to fold in on itself, he said: “It was eventually during that reflective process that I worked out that you could link bits of the buildings together so that the things that went up were balanced with the bits that went down with no power.

“In some cases there are jacks that do this but you don’t need cranes, builders or equipment and that makes it agile in a different way.

“This is reducing the cost of building - it’s basically factory built houses.

“You can have a house that you drive along and that you open up and you live in, or a shop that serves and opens and already has its mechanisms.

“It can been as on and off grid in principle as it needs to be.”