We present a photometrical and morphological study of the properties of low-redshift (z<0.5) quasars based on a large and homogeneous data set of objects derived from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 7. This study over number by a factor of ~5 any other previous study of quasi-stellar object (QSO) host galaxies at low redshift undertaken either on ground or on space surveys. We used ~400 quasars that were imaged in the SDSS Stripe 82 that is up to 2mag deeper than standard Sloan images. For these quasars we undertake a study of the host galaxies and of their environments. In this paper we report the results for the quasar hosts. We are able to detect the host galaxy for more than 3/4 of the whole data set and characterize the properties of their hosts. We found that QSO hosts are dominated by luminous galaxies of absolute magnitude M-3<M(R)<M. For the unresolved objects we computed an upper limit to the host luminosity. For each well-resolved quasar we are also able to characterize the morphology of the host galaxy that turn out to be more complex than what found in previous studies. QSOs are hosted in a variety of galaxies from pure ellipticals to complex/composite morphologies that combine spheroids, disc, lens and halo. The black hole (BH) mass of the quasar, estimated from the spectral properties of the nuclei, is poorly correlated with the total luminosity of the host galaxy. However, taking into account only the bulge component we found a significant correlation between the BH mass and the bulge luminosity of the host.

Cone search capability for table J/MNRAS/440/476/qsos (The low-redshift QSO sample, and the properties of their host galaxies)