A low-luminosity type-1 QSO Sample - Overluminous host spheroidals or undermassive black holes? The properties of the host galaxies of quasi-stellar objects (QSOs) are essential for the understanding of the suspected coevolution of central supermassive black holes (BHs) and their host galaxies. Low-luminosity QSOs are ideal targets because of their higher space density compared to QSOs with higher luminosity at same distance and their smaller cosmological distance allowing for detailed structural analysis. We selected a subsample of the Hamburg/ESO survey for bright UV-excess QSOs, containing only the 99 nearest type-1 QSOs with redshift z<=0.06. From this sample, we observed 20 galaxies in the near infrared (NIR) J, H and K bands and performed aperture photometry and bulge-disk decomposition with the BUDDA code in order to separate the different stellar components and the nuclear point source from each other. We use the parametric models to remove the nuclear point source in order to investigate the morphology of the host galaxies and estimate stellar masses. Furthermore, we compare BH mass estimates from published M(BH)-L(bulge) relations with available measurements from single epoch spectroscopy. We find the low-luminosity QSOs to establish a "bridge" between the local Seyfert population and more distant, more powerful QSOs. The observed active galaxies seem not to follow the M(BH)-L(bulge) relations of inactive galaxies. Given the improved observational capabilities using ALMA and (in future) the E-ELT, detailed studies of nearby samples as presented here are essential.