Asset Placement into Various Account Types

REIT ETFs shouldn't be in the non-qualified account because you don't get a tax break on the dividends.

The general rule is (taxable) bonds in the IRA, stocks in taxable and/or Roth accounts. General rules, of course, have lots of situation-specific exceptions.

Nevertheless, the idea is that a substantial portion of the return on bonds (if not all) is going to be taxable as ordinary income, at your highest marginal rate -- which is exactly how withdrawals from the IRA are going to be taxed anyway.

Qualified dividends from stocks, as well as long-term capital gains (also more likely from stocks) are not taxed the same way, so they do okay, relatively, in a taxable account.

The Roth IRA is where you'd want your "growth-iest" things - if you expect, say, small-cap, international small-cap, emerging markets to outperform large-caps -- you'd put them all into the Roth. This, of course, depends on what you expect those returns to be - which is just a guess.

REITs are generally an exception -- the dividends from them are generally not "qualified" like those of more typical stocks from companies which pay taxes -- and therefore they are terribly tax-inefficient at least with respect to their dividends.

Additionally, take into consideration your marginal tax rate and taxable-equivalent yield of muni bonds.

And don't forget the new Medicare Net Investment Income tax (part of the Affordable Care Act) -- which can (if your AGI is high enough) impose an additional 3.8% tax on investment income -- which does *not* include distributions from IRAs and Roths (though distributions from IRAs could contribute to pushing other investment income up above the threshold).

Your planned sequence of withdrawals should be considered, as well as the possibility of doing Roth conversions as well.

The spread between taxable and tax-exempt bond yields is so low that I think it makes sense to put stocks in tax-deferred accounts and municipal bonds in the taxable account.