Any time you have delimiter problems, there is generally ONLY ONE WAY to permanently solve that kind of problem:  Put the onus for fixing it on the source of the...

And if one wants to take it further, using Drew's fine code as the basis, what about this?
DECLARE @xml AS xml =
    CONVERT(xml,
N'<SearchQuery>
  <DealTypeDesc>Deal</DealTypeDesc>
  <VendorNum>1</VendorNum>
 ...

If you ever need more than 100 months (8 and 1/3 years) for a given input row, just update the query to add another instance of the Nums table in...

Try this:
CREATE TABLE #temp (
    Id int NOT NULL,
    [start_date] date NOT NULL,
    end_date date NOT NULL
);
INSERT INTO #temp (Id, [start_date], end_date)
    VALUES    (1, '07/01/2017', '08/01/2018'),
            (2, '06/01/2015',...