I am a bit worried about the sort of advice expat lawyer gives to his/her clients!
It was me saying she was misinformed - the Brit seemed to be encouraging her to ask around about it.
Its because its one of those laws that gets regularly flaunted.
People are openly advertising and soliciting with their names&phone numbers which can be trivially traced.
Illegal : yes but extremely common with hundreds (if not thousands) of people regularly breaking this law.
Also, with that housing budget it's not as if OP will be in a cramped apartment tripping over her all the time!
It's an interesting question and one I struggle with. There are heaps of laws in HK that are regularly flouted (for example, all those CEO cars that never get a ticket for parking illegally while ordinary mortals are regularly hounded). It's pretty clear at many FDH laws are also flouted - sharing helpers, helpers working for someone else on their days off, helpers living out .... mostly these work until someone gets unhappy and it only takes one unhappy friend of a helper to go and snitch on their friend for the whole thing to come tumbling down. And that could easily happen - some of these girls are quite young and if the friend nicks their boyfriend, for example, ... who knows what could happen!
It's worth the OP knowing what is legal, what is common and what is possible then she can make her own mind up about it.
As mentioned a live out is illegal, but you can read the other posts about that point.
What I wanted to mention was your desire for a creche. One thing to consider is that many of the apartment buildings here have 'children's rooms'. Some, like the Bamboo Grove, are pretty insane. Padded walls, climbing towers, slides, etc. In our building we have a similar set up where the kids go down at least once or twice a day for playtime.
Our building a bit smaller, and the helpers generally have worked out a schedule amongst themselves. They take the under 2s down from 3:00-4:00 or so. The 3-5s show up about 4, and the over 6s after that. Of course it isn't set in stone or anything, but they try to work something out so the kids get plenty of interaction with other kids.
Anyway--as you look for a place to live, don't underestimate the value of a kid's playroom.