The first one is Redwood City ,CA (94061 - a local market) and Fort Worth, TX (76180 - a virtual market).

I’m considering hiring a virtual assistant to handle my cold calling and admin work.

Glad that you’ve decided to dive into real estate.If you are okay with virtual learning for your real estate license, I’d suggest Kaplan College of Real Estate.

These STRs are in Mission Beach and virtually all of the STR rentals there have been empty. 

Possibly think about renting it out as storage/ install some coin operated laundry machines.

who's using virtual tours and how much do you pay?

Supporting Frank's advice, it's virtually impossible to achieve a variance in most Nassau County municipalities.

Another option is to arrange virtual tours though it might take some time to set it up.

Again, plenty of people building off market lead machines to pickup properties below market value, it’s just that when you’re competing with as many people all looking for the same thing in the same space you have to go in knowing what unique thing you are going to bring to the table (cash, leads, connections, etc) that no one else can offer in order to walk away with a performing asset. 

They are very knowledgeable and helpfull and I have been doing training in person at first but alot of virtual meetings and training classes now.