We present first results from our study of the properties of \sim 400 low redshift ( z < 0.5 ) quasars , based on a large homogeneous dataset derived from the Stripe 82 area of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey ( SDSS ) Data Release 7 ( DR7 ) .
For this sky region , deep ( r \sim 22.4 ) u , g , r , i , z images are available , up to \sim 2 mag deeper than standard SDSS images , allowing us to study both the host galaxies and the Mpc-scale environments of the quasars .
This sample greatly outnumbers previous studies of low redshift quasar hosts , from the ground or from space .
Here we report the preliminary results for the quasar host galaxies .
We are able to resolve the host galaxy in \sim 80 % of the quasars .
The quasar hosts are luminous and large , the majority of them in the range between M*-1 and M*-2 , and with \sim 10 kpc galaxy scale-lengths .
Almost half of the host galaxies are best fit with an exponential disk , while the rest are spheroid-dominated .
There is a reasonable relation between the central black hole mass and the host galaxy luminosity .