Airbnb, long a flash point for controversy in its hometown, has achieved detente with San Francisco at the cost of slower growth — while pursuing other expansions that could stir new issues.

San Francisco is not alone in reining in Airbnb. Cities from South Lake Tahoe to New York to Paris are cracking down on short-term rentals, concerned about housing availability and neighborhood impact.

As one of the world’s most valuable venture-backed companies prepares for an initial public offering valuing it in the tens of billions of dollars — more than any hotel chain — how fast Airbnb can grow as regulations tighten is a key question. Though San Francisco is a small part of Airbnb’s business, it is the company’s oldest market and a key laboratory for change.

A year after strict new rules forced Airbnb to jettison thousands of listings, the company’s core business of homes and rooms for short-term rentals is fairly static in San Francisco. However, it’s seen a big growth in places rented for 30 days or more, which are exempt from city requirements that the properties be inhabited by permanent residents.

Airbnb now has 2,058 whole homes, 1,608 rooms and 23 shared rooms for temporary rent in San Francisco, according to data from the Office of Short-Term Rentals. That totals 3,689 listings, just 44 more than a year ago, shortly after Airbnb ditched thousands of unregistered listings. (It includes hosts who have applied for city registration, but not yet been confirmed as eligible.)

The city’s information come both from its registry of properties and from Inside Airbnb, a firm that uses automated scripts to extract data from Airbnb’s website.

Airbnb’s data show that it has about 4,100 listings, an increase of 400 since last year.

Why the discrepancy? Numbers fluctuate from day to day as hosts add and remove listings or hide their calendars.

Meanwhile, Airbnb says that the number of exempt listings — homes rented for 30 days or more, boutique hotels, and bed and breakfasts — went from 2,600 a year ago to 3,700 now.

HomeAway/VRBO, which has always had a smaller presence here because it focuses on second homes, has 210 entire-home listings, down from 229 a year ago, according to city records.

The number of registered hosts grew even though listings did not, rising from 2,206 a year ago to 2,769 now. The city attributes this to hosts whose listings were on conditional status winning approval.

Both San Francisco and Airbnb say they are happy to have reached a rapprochement after years of conflict as the city tried to rein in the conversion of homes to hotels to preserve scarce housing, while Airbnb defended the rentals as helping people make ends meet in an expensive city.

“The year one numbers are encouraging and show that the system is largely working as it was designed,” said Supervisor Aaron Peskin, who’s been among Airbnb’s fiercest critics. “Obviously, the reduction of short-term rentals after implementation last year was positive. Airbnb has stuck to its word, and seems to be implementing its obligation in good faith.”

A judge compelled Airbnb and rival HomeAway/VRBO to let the city vet all listings through its registration process. In mid-January last year, those companies had to ditch unregistered listings — except those that were exempt because they are rented for longer periods, or qualify as a boutique hotel or a bed and breakfast. Airbnb scrubbed 4,780 listings, but noted that many had been inactive.

“The consequence is what we’d hoped for for a long time,” said Kevin Guy, director of the Office of Short-Term Rentals. “We’re having people stay on the platform who are truly eligible and people removed who are not eligible.”

As Airbnb gears up for an initial public offering this year or next, it welcomes stability around rules. It was quick to say that the changes didn’t hurt its bottom line, even though the rapid growth it had enjoyed in San Francisco has slowed.

“This was a winner-winner-chicken-dinner scenario,” said Chris Lehane, Airbnb head of global public policy and public affairs. “Interests were aligned; everyone emerged as a winner.”

Airbnb said the value of its bookings in San Francisco for 2018 was the same as in the prior year, which started with more than twice as many short-term listings. Its explanation: The number of nights hosted per listing rose 42 percent. The increase in exempt listings, which coincidentally also increased 42 percent, is another factor.

At the same time, Airbnb said, it had 44 percent annual growth in guest arrivals in the five counties surrounding San Francisco, without specifying how that affected regional revenue.

Prices of Airbnb rentals have been relatively flat, other than seasonal variations, according to data from Beyond Pricing, a service that helps hosts decide what to charge. Entire homes in San Francisco are now $254, up just $20 over the past four years, and corresponding to the average cost of a hotel room, although Airbnb homes can have several bedrooms and can accommodate several people, making them cheaper per person.

“We haven’t seen a dramatic increase in Airbnb prices because there are still all the hotel alternatives,” said Ian McHenry, the Beyond Pricing CEO. He tracked higher occupancies last year, especially during the peak summer months when Airbnb’s San Francisco occupancy rate hit 82 percent, up 10 percentage points from two years earlier.

Amid the newfound harmony, there remains a potential point of conflict: homes rented for 30 days or more, which are exempt from the registration requirement. They can easily be multiple units controlled by a single landlord, or people’s second homes — exactly the type of properties the city wants returned to permanent housing stock. Many appear to be listings that couldn’t qualify as short-term rentals.

“As we deny applications, maybe because we find they don’t live in the unit, some hosts pivot to a 30-plus-day listing,” Guy said.

Peskin said he’s working on a way to rein in the 30-plus-day rentals, which can advertise on lots of venues.

“This is a problem that predates Airbnb where you have housing meant for San Franciscans that’s taken off the market and turned into long-term corporate rentals,” he said. “That’s the next frontier that we’ve got to get our arms around.”

Airbnb’s Lehane bristled at a suggestion that hosts who switched to 30-plus days are skirting regulations, noting that they are exempt from the rules.

The marketplace “ends up being incredibly adaptable,” he said. “The city’s laws work and we’re able to continue to grow.”

Airbnb’s adaptability manifests itself in myriad other ways as it looks to become a full-service travel provider, helping people figure out how to get somewhere, where to stay and what to do while they’re there. This month, it hired aviation pioneer Fred Reid, the former CEO of Virgin America, for the new position of global head of transportation.

The company is actively pursuing new ways to boost revenue. A division called Backyard will design and build homes that can be rented to travelers. Its Friendly Buildings Program encourages landlords and property managers to allow tenants to host on Airbnb, averting the decidedly unfriendly reaction Airbnb received from a landlords group, the San Francisco Apartment Association.

One of its broadest new offerings, called Experiences, consists of tours, classes and hands-on activities taught by hosts — making paella in Barcelona, dancing with drag queens in the Castro neighborhood, learning salsa in Miami, for instance. It’s now in 1,000 cities.

Mission District resident Marieke Von Rotz Johnson said she had a great time renting rooms on Airbnb to help make mortgage payments on the Victorian she inherited from her father. Recently, like the company itself, she added Experiences, teaching visitors to throw clay on a pottery wheel. It’s been so well received that she quit her day job to devote herself to ceramics.

“Airbnb was the bridge for me to leave that security and see what I can do on my own,” she said.

A host since 2011, she predated the city’s registration system. “I was a bit surprised at how much paperwork and how serious it was,” she said.

But she had some perspective from having taught art at Hospitality House, which works to help Tenderloin residents develop community.

“Housing is a big issue, and the nonprofit wanted Airbnb to not be taking housing opportunities from people who want to be here long term,” she said. “It made it more understandable to me when that change (registration requiring proof of residency) happened.”

Meanwhile, some longtime hosts who agreed with the purpose of the registration system now say the city is going too far in enforcement.

Kepa Askenasy has rented spaces in her Potrero Hill home through Airbnb since 2010, racking up frequent bookings and five-star reviews for the four suites, which are rooms with bathrooms, coffee bars and private entrances from her home’s courtyard.

She was disconcerted in January when the city revoked her short-term rental registration and gave her four days to cancel all bookings. Her home’s unusual configuration led planners to conclude that she didn’t live in the same dwelling as her rentals. Not wanting to leave the visitors high and dry, she offered that they could stay for free as her personal guests.

“The way the city enforces the law is to shut you down right away with a very cryptic description,” said Askenasy, who is appealing the decision. A building inspector determined that three of the suites are part of her house, leaving a stand-alone cabana still at issue, but she cannot host guests until her registration is restored. “It appears to me that they are considering us guilty until proven innocent.”

Guy, the short-term rental official, said his office, which used to exert lots of detective work to track down rental scofflaws, now has more time to review new registrations and those up for renewal.

“It is tricky when people have unique parcel or building arrangements,” he said without commenting directly on Askenasy’s case.

But the flagrant violations — landlords renting more than a dozen units on Airbnb, for instance — seem to be a relic of the past. “We have much more confidence now that people are operating short-term rentals within the expectations and the confines of the regulations,” he said.

Editor’s note: This story has been updated with additional information about the source of San Francisco’s short-term rental data.

Carolyn Said is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: csaid@sfchronicle.com

Twitter: @csaid